County staff releases 18 recommendations
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Oxford County councillors will make their first hefty decisions regarding the future of waste management Wednesday.
After a more-than-two-year process, county staff will release 18 recommendations to council, which. if approved, will allow the tendering process to start.
The final and draft recommendations are similar, although several ideas laid out during the draft report public information session in June have been recycled and won't be finalized until tendering takes place, said Pam Antonio, Oxford's waste management co-ordinator on Monday.
County staff has prepared ballpark figures of savings and increased costs for each recommendation but wants more detailed information for council prior to final decisions being made.
"For example, in the draft we were really recommending a six-day- a-week program. We need to make the public and council more educated about the system, but in order to do that we need pricing, so that's why we'd like to go to the tendering process before final decisions are made," she said.
The tendering process also allows for the issue of large item pickup to be investigated further before drastic changes.
Antonio said during public consultation it was clear the public wanted a large item pickup program to continue but also wanted changes to eliminate abuse.
"We're not recommending getting rid of the large item pickup program. We want to see what comes up through the tendering process and by talking to waste management companies. Maybe they have some ideas that will work for us to allow us to keep the program but make it more efficient," she said.
Any future for bag tag increases are also tied to tendering and ultimately the next contract.
"Until we know what it's going to cost us, we can't be sure that we need to increase bag tags," she said.
Antonio hopes, with council's approval, tendering can begin in September, allowing bidders two months to put proposals together. The goal is to have a recommendation come forward to the newly elected council during the first meeting of January 2015.
There are about 10 waste management companies that service municipalities in the province. The county's current contract finishes fall of 2015.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Rename the Oxford County landfill site
2. Develop a bag tag vendor kit
3. Amend the current fees and charges bylaw
4. Increase curbside education and awareness
5. Bag tag pricing sustainability program
6. Garbage and recycling contract procurement process
7. Purchase my-waste app software
8. Identify local transfer station
9. Development of curbside set out promotion and educational material
10. Develop a standardized curbside collection bylaw
11. Implement a user-pay system for large article collection
12. Relaunch the county's backyard composting program
13. Develop standard operating procedures for the operation of municipal brush, leaf and yard waste depots
14. Perform operational and cost efficiency analysis on municipal brush, leaf and yard waste depots 15.Discontinue scrap metal depots and decrease the number of special waste collection events
16. Explore partnership opportunities with not-for-profit agencies for special waste collection
17. Development of established performance metrics for monitoring and measurement of program performance
18. Implement landfill material bans and an IC&I Waste diversion promotion and education program