Five of seven members of the College Station city council were not ready to approve the first rate increase for trash collection in ten years.
The majority sided Thursday night with James Benham, who wanted more information about the residential rate increase of $2.35 a month…then freeze rates for the next five years.
Benham also received majority support to gauge the interest of private companies picking up trash, which was followed by comments from city manager Kelly Templin about the tradeoff of privatization.
Staff said the increase would take care of their revenue needs for the next five years.
The sanitation services budget is projected to lose more than $200,000 dollars during the 2018 fiscal year that is underway, and more than $1 million in fiscal 2019 and 2020. That’s according to the bar graph that is on page nine of the slideshow below that came from blog.cstx.gov.
Click below for a summary of comments from the College Station council meeting of October 26, 2017:
From blog.cstx.gov: The council voted unanimously to accept the first internal audit of the city’s sanitation operations. The audit found that the high level of service the Sanitation Division provides to its customers leads to increased costs and slower collections.
The audit recommends that the division investigate routing methods to increase employee and citizen accountability, adjust hiring guidelines and employee advancement systems, and revise collection scheduling as well as construction and development standards. The audit also recommends the creation of sanitation safety videos for the public.