Columbus City Council members agreed to appropriate additional money to public works to pay for recycling fees and purchase some tires.
Members passed an ordinance on first reading to appropriate $120,000 from the city’s general fund to the public works budget.
Ordinances must be passed on two readings to be approved. Council member Jerone Wood, D-District 3, was absent.
The appropriation includes $100,000 to cover recycling fees — the city switched vendors for the curbside recycling program from Waste Management to Rumpke this year because the price of their services had increased significantly, Director of Public Works Bryan Burton said previously. That was partly because Waste Management no longer uses the site they previously used as a transfer station.
The department initially signed a three-month contract with Rumpke in January. The council granted an additional $100,000 on April 2 to extend that contract for the rest of the year.
Burton had told council members the appropriations were likely during last year’s budgeting process.
“Earlier this year we asked for an extra $100,000,” Burton said. “We started with $75,000 and now we’re asking for an additional $100,000 to cover our fees.”
The other $20,000 will be used to purchase tires for the department’s vehicles, but also some police vehicles as well.
“The second ask is for tires. This year, we took on the maintenance budget for CPD, and that’s a part of the issue we’re having this year. And we also had a lot of flat tires this year with our trucks going to the landfill.”
There are a number of fees associated to carry out the city’s recycling program. There are scale fees, haul fees and load fees, Burton said. If a truck carrying Columbus’ recyclables weighs more than 4-and-a-half tons, then Rumpke pays a scale fee of $90. The city pays on trucks weighing below 4-and-a-half tons. The fee to haul recyclables to Rumpke’s recycling center in Medora, Indiana is $825 each time. The loading fee is $160 per load.
“One thing we are working on right now, we’re working with Rumpke to try to reduce those costs, to build a facility at our current landfill, the Bartholomew County Landfill, and that should reduce our cost,” Burton said.
City officials have noted in meetings this year just how much the cost of recycling has increased since curbside recycling began in 2015.
“We’re working on it to try to get the cost down there, (it’s) still going to be up there a lot more than what we were paying in the past, but we know that recycling does cost money,” Burton said.
