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City of Powell River considers loan for garbage trucks

Vehicle purchase part of phased plan to combine waste and recycling pickups
garbage trucks
FIRST STEP: City of Powell River manager of operational services Shawn Cator made a presentation to the city’s finance committee on Thursday, August 25, regarding the issue of purchasing two solid-waste garbage trucks. City council is expected to vote on the resulting finance committee recommendations in September. Chris Bolster photo

A decision on purchasing two automated-lift, solid-waste garbage trucks will be the first step in a direction to streamline curb side pickup programs, said City of Powell River manager of operational services Shawn Cator.

Cator presented to the city’s finance committee on Thursday, August 25, on the issue of the trucks. An earlier staff report identified the city’s federal gas tax as a source of funding for the trucks with a combined cost of $720,000.

“Council was apprehensive to use the gas tax, so they brought it to finance committee to determine if there were any other funding sources potential for this project and they did do that,” said Cator.

The finance committee made a recommendation to city council that the city borrow $420,000 in a five-year municipal loan and the remainder, $320,000, come from the city’s equipment-replacement reserve fund. Council is expected to vote on that borrowing at an upcoming council meeting in September.

Replacement of the city’s garbage trucks is phase one of a plan that will see the scope of pickup increased in the coming years to include household organics and yard waste, in addition to recycling and garbage.

Council is also expected to approve an organic waste curb side pilot collection for 500 homes in 2017. Funding for that, estimated at $37,000, will come from the city’s operations budget.

The pilot program will provide information for a larger city-wide collection plan, possibly in 2018. Cost of the pilot will increase the 2017 garbage tax levy from $48.80 per household per year to $60.13.

Powell River resident Paul McMahon wrote to council in July to request it follows the decision a previous council made in 2013 to delay the purchase of the trucks until after the organics trial wrapped up and to wait for the results.

“While the trucks may well be beyond their best-before date and maintenance costs will be rising, the fact is they will last another six to nine months,” stated McMahon.

Despite the fact that the city’s garbage trucks already passed their operational life expectancy, the department held off purchasing replacement trucks out of a need for certainty that new trucks could be used for organics collection, a topic of civic discussion for quite some time, said Cator.

“We put the purchase off a bit and that meant we had to do more maintenance on the trucks in the short term,” he said. “But we ultimately didn’t buy the wrong trucks.”

Delivery on the new trucks is expected to take six months. The trucks are split bin, so they will be able to pick up two waste streams at once. The current system requires two separate trucks to pick up garbage and recycling.

“We’re at the right time now where we can update with this new technology, improve our system and ultimately improve the solid waste collection for Powell River,” said Cator.

The trucks have larger capacities than the current ones and will create more efficiencies for collection time and fuel, he added.

“They also include lift arms that, when paired with custom bins, will reduce the risk of staff injury,” said Cator.

If the phases role out according to plan, Cator said the city expects full organics collection, implementation of a new bin system where every household receives three collection bins and the elimination of garbage tags to occur in 2018 at the earliest.