A working group might be put together to figure out if Haines’ garbage situation needs improvement.
One possibility dominated a Sept. 15 Haines Borough Assembly commerce committee meeting — whether to make garbage pickup mandatory.
Committee chairwoman Margaret Friedenauer said she would meet with Mayor Jan Hill about setting up such a working group to see what should be done. No timetable was set for creating such a task force, which would include input from residents. “I would love to see this kick off with a community meeting,” Friedenauer said.
Currently, more than half of the borough’s homes and businesses use Community Waste Solutions, which also bought out Acme Transfer’s stations in July. CWS collects an average of 1,770 tons of trash a year, and is currently at about 70 percent of that figure for 2016, said Sally Garton, CWS office manager.
The other commerce committee members, Mike Case and Tresham Gregg, supported the idea of a working group to study and discuss what is needed.
CWS trash collection rates vary according to the amount of garbage picked up at a business or home. Some examples are $47 per month for one can picked up every two weeks, $67 per month for two cans picked up every two weeks and $63 per month for four cans of recyclables and two cans of regular trash picked up every two weeks. Garton did not know how switching to a mandatory pickup would affect CWS pickup fees. CWS would have to add one truck to the one it currently uses, she said.
Meanwhile, Case, Gregg and assembly member Diana Lapham, who also attended the Sept. 15 meeting, voiced concerns about adding taxes to pay for an operation that would cover 100 percent of Haines residents. “A mandatory tax right now — that is going to put people off. There’ll be more illegal dumping,” Lapham said.
People and assembly members discussed whether a property tax increase or sales tax increase would be preferable. Some said a sales tax would spread the burden evenly among property owners and people who don’t own property — with tourists picking up a share for the wastes they create. “The tourism industry has a huge impact on how much waste is disposed of,” Garton said.
However, Case noted that a sales tax is regressive, which means a poor family would pay a greater share of its income than a well-to-do family would. “If someone has got to pay for it, they’ll take the path of least resistance,” he said, citing a balancing act of trash pickup’s convenience versus its costs.