SUBJECT/RECOMMENDATION:
Title
Approve the combining of the Solid Waste Fund and the Recycling Fund for the purposes of financial statement presentation, residential rate presentation, and the application of Council policy for reserve requirement and provide an effective date. (consent)
Body
SUMMARY:
Clearwater Solid Waste won the right to provide recycling to Clearwater through a bidding process that included proposals from private enterprises such as Waste Management, Kimmins Recycling, DisposAll, and Browning-Ferris Industries. Since its inception in Fiscal Year 1993-94, the Recycling Fund has been accounted for as a separate enterprise fund from the Solid Waste Fund, in order to provide transparency regarding the Recycling Fund's financial condition.
With the Department's transition to single stream recycling, the amount of tons diverted from solid waste to recycling has dramatically increased. While this assists the Solid Waste Fund in reducing their disposal costs, it creates a financial burden on the Recycling Fund. This is due to the fact that the market prices for co-mingled commodity versus hand-sorted commodity, is significantly lower. This decrease in revenue generation has caused a financial hardship on the Recycling Fund.
Staff believes that the time is right to combine these two funds (Solid Waste and Recycling) as demonstrated in the presentation just offered by Burton and Associates.
APPROPRIATION CODE AND AMOUNT:
This item will have no net financial impact to the Solid Waste Fund or the Recycling Fund.