Residents of smaller municipalities and rural communities around Prince George may not get their recycling service back if it's stopped at the end of the month, said a report prepared for a special Thursday morning meeting of the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George board of directors.
The board has to decide what to do about their recycling services contract, which expires at the end of May. The three options presented by regional district staff are to let the contract with Cascades Recovery Ltd. run out, bridge the contract until curbside recycling is brought in to Prince George in September or extend it for another year until the end of May 2015.
On Monday, a new provincial stewardship program begins, moving the responsibility for the recycling of packaging and printed paper to the producers who introduce it to the marketplace.
Multi-Material B.C. (MMBC), a non-profit organization formed to represent affected businesses, is responsible for helping producers meet the 75 per cent recovery rate mandated by the province. To do this, local governments had the first right of refusal to do the collection. Those who didn't take them up on their offer had the service put out for a private contractor to bid on.
The regional district and its four member municipalities (Prince George, Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount) all rejected MMBC's offer, but only the city of Prince George will receive third-party collection service.
Last month, regional district directors found themselves disagreeing on how to move forward to fill the gap left by the lack of service being introduced outside of the city limits.
City directors Cameron Stolz, Shari Green, and Dave Wilbur all spoke in favour of supporting the option that would take away the drop-depot bins throughout the region as a way to send a message to the province that the recycling regulation as currently written wasn't doing enough to force MMBC to provide service to all communities.
Rural and other municipal directors expressed concern over the concept of taking away recycling from their residents while the city would at least have curbside collection coming in.
According to the staff report, if the board chooses not to extend the Cascades contract for an extra year, there will be an extra cost to the city as well as to Mackenzie in the order of $30,000 and $3,000, respectively, for extra tipping fees at the landfill.
However, not renewing the contract would cost the regional district almost $380,000 less this year overall than if it was extended through 2015 and residents wouldn't be paying twice for a service (at the till and on their utility bill). That plan would send 800 tonnes of recyclable material to the landfill this year and collect only 730 tonnes, compared to sending no recyclables to the landfill with the year-long extension and recycling more than 2,300 tonnes of material.
In a letter sent to the PG Free Press earlier this month, environment and parks committee chair and Area G director Terry Burgess said "a rumour circulated that the city was going to exercise its weighted vote" to ensure that the option of not extending the contract was successful. Area C director Lara Beckett successfully moved to postpone the decision from being made at the April 17 meeting.
The weighted vote is a rarely used tool at the disposal of city representatives. On certain issues - mostly those with financial implications - the four directors (Green, Stolz, Wilbur and Murry Krause) can determine a vote themselves, as they have 18 votes between them (Green and Krause have five, Wilbur and Stolz each have four). Depending on population of where they represent, the other 10 directors have up to two votes, for a total of 14.
But the city isn't always unanimous as a block of four, said the Prince George mayor.
"We vote as we see fit on what is best for the region," Green said. "I find it concerning that people would suggest we have some special power that we shall wield as we see fit. There's a reason why we have the number of votes that we do... We pay 70 per cent of many, many items at the regional district and therefore the weighted vote reflects that."
