The city will not buy back unused blue garbage tags from residents.
Coun. Cam MacKay tried to convince council that buying back the tags was the right thing to do now that the city has its new toter system in place, but only Coun. Wes Brodhead agreed.
Last December city council passed a policy to buy back garbage tags that were not used under the old tag-a-bag system. The city has been providing refunds only for the yellow tags bought for extra garbage and not the blue tags. The rationale is that residents didn’t directly buy the blue tags because they were part of residents’ mandatory monthly subscription.
The city has been receiving complaints that the buy-back plan didn’t include the blue tags.
MacKay argued residents did pay for the blue tags because the city changed its waste system but didn’t give residents an option to use up their remaining tags prior to the June 1 changeover.
“For me this is just about fairness,” he said. “It gives people an opportunity to transition to a new system without feeling ripped off.
“It’s an opportunity for us to stand up for our residents because they wouldn’t be complaining and calling if they thought this was fair,” MacKay added.
Breaking down the subscription system to a per-bag cost puts the value of the blue tags at $1.10 each. To MacKay, buying these tags back at $1.10 each is good business because yellow tags for extra garbage cost residents $2.15.
“We’re going to save money in the long run by doing this,” he argued.
Coun. Cathy Heron agreed the issue was one of fairness and smoothing the transition to the new program.
“Most people that I talked to didn’t care,” she said. But she also worried about the potential price tag.
“We could easily get $150,000 in requests and I cannot imagine where we would come up with that money,” she said.
The city has issued more than 2.5 million blue tags since 2008. City administration estimates that most of the 13,437 households that subscribed would have well in excess of 20 unused blue tags. This is based on calls the city has received during its transition to automated waste pickup.
Brodhead supported MacKay’s motion because he felt providing a refund would be the best way to dispel the confusion that’s out there around the tag refunds.
“You can argue both ways whether they deserve it or not. The reality is they’ve got them,” Brodhead said.
Coun. Roger Lemieux wondered where the city would get the money. He’s heard from one resident who has 11 sheets of tags that are worth more than $200.
Mayor Nolan Crouse felt it was too risky to open up the refunds to blue tags because there’s no telling how many are out there.
“It could be hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “I think this is high risk. High risk, low reward.”
Coun. Malcolm Parker saw the issue in black and white.
“They never paid for the blue tags, therefore there’s no refund,” he said.
Residents can use extra tags of any colour to drop off garbage at the city’s recycle yard. The city is contemplating how to allow residents to use blue tags for the disposal of items other than regular garbage.
One idea being considered is having a special drop off at the recycle depot for larger items like chairs, couches and mattresses. The fee would be in the form of tags.
