Subsidised waste service options to go out for public comment

OPTIONS for four different subsidised waste services will be included in the Moorabool Shire’s draft budget with the purpose of gauging public demand.

Councillors voted 5–4 to include the proposals in the draft budget at an unscheduled meeting last week.

At this stage, the draft budget is due to go to the council in May to go out for public consultation. It will then go back to councillors for adoption in late June.

The first option will be a hard waste drop-off at transfer stations of two, one-cubic-metre allocations a year for all households with no charge at the station entry.

Option two will be a one-month free green waste drop-off at transfer stations each year, and the third will be a mattress drop-off at transfer stations with the shire subsidising half the cost for one month a year.

And option four will be a targeted hard waste kerbside collection. It will be available to elderly or ‘unable’ residents, will be capped at allocations of two cubic metres and will be limited to 500 properties a year.

An officer’s report to the meeting listed the estimated cost to the shire of the hard waste drop-off as $190,000 (or $9.99 per service); the green waste drop-off as $38,000 ($2 per service); the half-price mattress month as $28,500 ($1.76 per service); and the kerbside pick-up as $142,500 ($8.82 per service).

The costs would be incorporated in the shire’s waste service charge.

Cr Sheila Freeman moved the recommendation to include the proposals in the draft budget, describing it as a practical and logical step in testing the idea by putting it up for public feedback.

Cr Freeman mentioned illegal dumping as a problem for the council and stressed that including the options did not mean they were being locked in.

“We’re not implementing them tonight, we’re voting to put them before the community so we can make an informed decision,” she said.

Cr Rod Ward seconded the motion, saying the issue went back about five years and the options’ inclusion would give residents an opportunity to make their feelings known.

Councillors Tom Sullivan, Ally Munari, Paul Tatchell and Moira Berry all spoke against the move.

Cr Sullivan questioned the fairness of residents ultimately paying for shire-subsidised services they may not use, and described the illegal dumping issue as “a furphy” because it had been shown that most of the waste was coming from people living outside the municipality.

Cr Munari added that the shire had already run a subsidised waste trial and “it wasn’t great”.

“I want to find a solution to this … but when people have to pay for it when they’re not going to use it, I just can’t allow that,” she said.

“The trial was the community consultation, that’s how I feel. I don’t think this is the answer.”

Cr Berry, meanwhile, expressed a concern about households that made few trips to a transfer station throughout the year paying for others to do so.

And Cr Tatchell described the past trial as “a folly” that resulted in a take-up rate of only 18 or 19 per cent.

“Once the novelty wears off and everyone cleans out their garage we’ll have exactly the same result, but maybe I need to loosen up a bit,” he said.

Councillors Jarrod Bingham and John Keogh spoke briefly in support of the motion because it simply meant asking the public for feedback.

In favour were councillors Bingham, Freeman, Keogh, Ward and mayor Steve Venditti-Taylor; against were councillors Sullivan, Tatchell, Munari and Berry.