Residents of the Town of Outlook woke up on Tuesday, October 15 to the shocking news that the town’s recycling depot had been closed, its employees had been terminated, and that an agreement had been signed with Loraas Disposal North Ltd. to establish a new curbside recycling program in the community.
There was no advance notice of the closure to affected ratepayers, a point that was brought up more than once at the public meeting hosted by the Town on October 17, and the Town cited “confidentiality restrictions” on an informational sheet distributed to businesses as a reason for the lack of notice.
Touching on the absence of advance notice even further at the public meeting last week, it was said after questioning that the Town was following the advice of legal representation in the way the news was distributed.
The decision to close the depot was made at the October 9 town council meeting and the Town had been looking at the hard numbers behind the depot for a number of months while exploring their options.
The depot numbers show a major difference between costs and revenue dating back as far as 2014. The operating costs in 2017, for example, were $306,053.09 while the reported revenue was $21,049.84. Last year’s numbers were $303,571.04 in operating costs and $16,446.39 in revenue. This year, the Town projected $199,672.00 in operating costs, with revenue coming in at $18,000.00.
With the move to a new program under Loraas Disposal, the company has provided large non-sort collection bins at the existing locations in Outlook until residential carts are delivered anywhere from 3-8 weeks.
Information pamphlets distributed around town highlight how the program works and the costs that are associated with it for town residents.
Residents will be provided with a 95-gallon cart to store on their property and no longer have to sort any items under the schedule of bi-weekly pick up days. All the carts will have serial numbers for tracking purposes.
The Town states that the fees for recycling were set “significantly lower than needed” for many years with the depot service, and if it were to continue running, the quarterly recycle fee for every household in Outlook would have to increase to approximately $80 in order to break even. In contrast, they say, the new curbside service under Loraas will only slightly increase the recycling fee, said to be around $36 or $144 per year.
For business owners in Outlook, the Town states that they may opt to go with a different company altogether for their recycling needs and that the choice is theirs.
For now, the Loraas bins around town are available for use until the residential carts arrive.
