Final reading of changes to city’s waste ordinance narrowly passes

By a split vote, the Red Oak City Council has approved the third and final reading amending the solid waste chapter of the city’s ordinance.
The second reading of the ordinance included the addition of a city-wide clean-up fee of $4 to the water bills of every Red Oak citizen, reducing the number of days to collect trash from 30 to 14 days, and setting a permit fee of $700 for each hauler who operated in the city. Any company providing the service of solid waste removal must be permitted by the City of Red Oak to do so, to ensure the city knows who operates in town. The city will also be able to get the data from them as it continues to monitor trash removal in the community, and the permitted haulers would be promoted on the city’s website and to new residents moving into the community. At the time of the initial fee proposal, the council was advised that the amount of the permit fee was similar to the permitting fees for trash haulers in other comparable cities to Red Oak.
The council opened up the meeting to public comment. Red Oak resident John Gross, who was one of the strongest in opposition to the city’s plans for mandatory curbside trash pick-up, addressed the council to instead offer help.
“I have provided packets for the council members. There’s some information to help with the city-wide scenarios. I’ll try to get extra help if we can get this done as strongly as possible. It does help the city. It makes a difference,” said Gross.
Gross had compiled information on potential haulers that could remove things like tires or batteries.
“Those are the only things that would actually cost us. There’s a local company that can assist, and since we will be paying on the water bill to have this done, I think that’s a fair trade to pay them for the tires to be disposed of properly, every battery disposed of properly, maybe even appliances with Freon disposed of properly. Cars can be hauled away by a person that’s legal, or a local that’s legal to perform the move and take care of that. There really shouldn’t be any reason we can’t get rid of everything that we need to as far as this junk that’s laying around to help people clear out,” commented Gross.
Also, Gross said he was planning to seek out a number of volunteers with pickups and trailers to help Red Oak residents with bulky or heavy items they couldn’t move themselves, and take those items to the location where the city will be holding the clean-up and collecting unwanted items and trash. Gross said he had nothing to get rid of, but he didn’t want to stay home on the clean-up day, he preferred to be out assisting the city in getting rid of the junk that’s been in the community for years.
Two other Red Oak citizens addressed the council before it discussed the ordinance changes. Linda King opposed the $4 charge on everyone’s water bill for those that weren’t going to use the service.
Red Oak resident Ronald King said he was supportive of the city-wide clean-up, but like Linda King, opposed the method of funding it.
“There are a lot of fixed-income people who live in this town, a lot of low-wage income people who live in this town. Costs have gone up everywhere, and they are considerably high. Inflation is crazy, and some of these people do not have the money to make it through the month. I’ve talked to a lot of Red Oak residents who are on Social Security, the little raise they got on didn’t even come close to what inflation has done to prices,” advised King. “These people have to make a choice. What are they going to skip? Maybe they have to skip the doctor’s appointment because they can’t afford to pay the deductibles or the co-payments. So they skip the doctor’s appointment. Maybe they skip their prescriptions. Maybe they’ve got to cut their costs by raising or lowering their thermostat or keeping their furnace and air conditioning off.”
Rather than have citizens pay, King felt the city should cover the cost of the clean-up through various taxes or through people that were willing to donate for the costs.
The council then moved to discussion on the ordinance change. Councilperson Sharon Bradley hesitated to approve a third reading with a $700 permit fee for the haulers.
“I have been on the fence about the fee. I understand there needs to be a balance there. I just kind of feel like it is a little off. My suggestion would be that we charge a permit fee per truck that comes into the city because there might be some haulers that have three trucks, some might have one,” stated Bradley. “I think it’s more feasible to charge them per truck than it is the one annual permit fee. Depending how many trucks we have on the streets, I’m suggesting a fee of $150 to $250 per truck. I think for the smaller haulers, it will be better for them. I don’t think it’s too much to ask because of the wear and tear on our streets.”
Should the city proceed with a different fee structure, city administrator Lisa Kotter said the city would need to draft an application that included the name of the company, company information, contact information, and the type of vehicles that the hauler had, be that rear-loaders, side loaders, dumpsters, and include the license plate numbers.
Councilperson Brian Bills asked if they were going to be charging every hauler for not only the residential trash trucks, but for the roll-off trucks and other trucks, and wasn’t sure if it would be cheaper. Councilperson Tim Fridloph agreed.
“If we’re worried about charging them too much, but if we charge them per truck, we might be charging them more. If they get to four trucks, now they’re paying more than they would have for the $700 fee if we did a base rate. At $200 per truck that’s $800. If you have five trucks. You’re paying $1,000. I would rather see us just lower the fee,” Fridolph said.
Lynette Bruce was invited by the council to speak. Batten had one residential truck out daily, one commercial truck out daily, and roll-off trucks. Bruce said that based on the number of vehicles, they would pay less with one permit fee rather than an individual fee for each vehicle.
While a number of council members were in favor of a fee reduction, Councilperson Adam Hietbrink said he would prefer to keep the fee at $700.
“We do have some guys that come from out of town with pickups that come and pick up people’s trash. I would rather have our local people stay local here and they can pick up those customers. I stay at $700, and that’s where I’m at. That way we would weed out some of those people that just come in and pick up trash in their trucks for $5 or $10 per trip. If you really are a business, it’s not breaking the bank for you compared to a guy that’s charging $5 and making $100 a month. And he might think differently now. I’m talking about using this fee as a deterrent because I just got done talking to a person about the individual collectors. They don’t live in our community, but they’re picking up trash bags from Red Oak,” said Hietbrink.
Bradley clarified that the reason she suggested a reduction was because she hadn’t considered the other trucks being included.
“I was thinking about maybe three residential trucks being in use  among the haulers would make it cheaper than the $700, but I wasn’t considering the roll-offs that Lynette and maybe some of the other haulers have that would also have to be charged $200,” said Bradley.
Councilperson Tim Fridolph said that he was in favor of Bradley’s proposal as well at first, until the roll offs became apparent. Administratively, it was also a headache.
“If we did it per truck even though it might help somebody, it does make more work for city hall, and it will end up costing more for our local haulers to pay per truck. If we want to reduce the fee, I’ll propose the third and final reading with the amendment of $500 for the permitting fee, for the haulers that operate in the City of Red Oak,” said Fridolph.
The council then proceeded to vote on the proposal. Fridloph, Bills, and Bradley voted to approve the third and final reading of the ordinance with the lowered permitting fee. Hietbrink and Haidsiak both voted against the proposal, and the third reading passed by a 3-2 margin.