Council postpones decision on curbside recycling

After a lengthy meeting, City Council recently postponed a decision on implementing a curbside recycling program.

Council didn’t take up a decision on approving the program and an associated contract until after 10 p.m. on Oct. 18 prompting Mayor John Muhlfeld to suggest the item be postponed.

“We’ve seen a lot of good comments and received a lot of letters on this and I wouldn’t mind taking some time to review those,” Muhlfeld said.

Council approved tabling the decision until its Dec. 6 meeting.

Whitefish has been on track to begin a mandatory residential curbside recycling program in the spring of 2022 with contractor Republic Services.

The city currently operates a single collection site on the snow lot at Columbia Avenue and Railway Street. It’s open to residents and businesses.

Public Works Director Craig Workman said has been exploring other options for its recycling program to solve a few issues, and creating a curbside program is also in the city’s Climate Action Plan.

“This program of a single centralized site for recycling suffers from overuse and contamination, with excess cardboard and garbage routinely being stacked by containers,” Workman said, also noting that the site is now owned by the Whitefish Housing Authority and is planned for an affordable housing project.

The curbside program is planned to be bi-weekly collection of residential curbside recycling. Items collected will be No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, flattened cardboard and paperboard, aluminum/tin/steel cans, and newspapers, magazines, office paper, catalogs, and junk mail.

The cost to residences will be $6.25 per month. At an estimated 3,500 customers that works out to a cost of $262,500 for the recycling program.

Concerns about the curbside recycling program were raised during the public comment portion of the meeting. Several people took issue with beginning a curbside recycling program when bears have been getting into garbage cans throughout town and others didn’t like the idea of the program becoming mandatory.

Gail Linne said she would rather take her recycling to a central recycling site because it ensures bears won’t be getting into it.

“The city needs to ensure that it has new requirements in place for citywide bear-proof containers before curbside recycling is considered,” she said.

Republic Services has said that properly disposed of recycling should be free of food residue and thus not pose an issue of attracting bears.

Leo Keane told Council that ending the central recycling site means that businesses will find it much more difficult to recycle likely sending items to the landfill. He suggested creating a subscription fee for a centralized recycling site that would pay for the cost of the site.

Susan Okonsky said there are many ways for people to recycle without making it mandatory for everyone.

“I’m not opposed to recycling, what I am is opposed to is mandatory recycling,” she said. “The city already is our largest utility bill.”

Matthew Scinto said if he hauls his recycling himself he gets paid for the materials and he’d rather keep it that way.

“I’ve been here for 43 years I’ve never seen so much mandated waste,” he said. “Why should I pay you for recycling?”

However, Nathan Dugan said he supports curbside recycling but recognizes that it’s a cost some can’t afford.

“The easier you make it the more likely people are to do it,” he said. “We should be sensitive to the people that might not be able to afford it and pushing people out of the community because of the cost.”

One resident who lives near the current central site also spoke in favor of the curbside program saying he is tired of looking out his window to see the trash left at the site.

Workman says the curbside program has some benefits in that it will likely result in a higher probability of capturing recycling, it will address contamination caused by individual customers much more effectively than a central site and the curbside program will not require construction and maintenance of any new infrastructure.

At this point, the city is expecting to begin the new program in April of 2022. This provides the time to get the new carts required for the program and educate the public on how the program works.

Republic Services continues to operate the city’s central recycling site even though their contract to do so ended. The city is covering the processing fees of that recycling program, which averages between $2,500 and $4,500 per month.