Standard Trash Cans

By Robert J "Bob" Ooten

The District provided Standard Trash cans in 2001/02. There has been controversy about the cost to residents who understoood they were free. One incumbent's candidate statement says he introduced the can program at no increase in trash fees", when in fact the trash fees were raised over 70% the past three years to pay for new programs including the Standard trash cans.

This year the cans were sold to the trash hauler for the remaining amount of the loan of 1.8 million dollars, who will now recoup the loan through fees paid by the District, new can charges, and through the new surcharge for more that two cans. The hauler will now handle the sale, exchange and recent surecharge for the 4000 residents who are choosing to keep three or more cans. The trash hauler CR&R will bill the 4000 residents who have kept three or more cans a querterly fee of $8.00 per can. The $8.00 monthly fee increase those residents trash fees by 40% per trash can. Those people are unhappy. The ones who turned in the extra trash cans are upset.

A number of people I talked to questioned the cans being free to begin. They talked to District personnel and wrote letters to the Pilot with their concerns that this was a free program. They misunderstood that they would pay for the cans with increased trash fees. In fact the first two years the District payed the loan fees out of reserves accumulated from the trash fees. The last three years, though, the fees for new programs have raised the residential trash fees by over 70%.

Several people pointed out that Dan Worthington's candidate statement for this year states that he introduced the idea of the standard trash cans and his candidate statement says "Important to note is that none of the programs he introduced added to residential trash fees". In fact we have payed for the cans all along from the trash fees collected for the reserves and more recently with the 70+% fee rate hikes over the past three years.