Not so fast: the price of a garbage bag tag in Owen Sound isn’t going up this month after all.
City council decided in a 5-2 recorded vote at Monday’s meeting against the bylaw to increase the price a bag tag to $3.50 each.
The defeat of the bylaw will prevent the one dollar price hike — from $2.50 to $3.50 per tag — council previously agreed on from coming into effect.
Councillors Jon Farmer and Brock Hamley supported it. Deputy Mayor Scott Greig, and councillors Marion Koepke, Carol Merton, Melanie Middlebro’ and Suneet Kukreja voted the bylaw down.
Mayor Ian Boddy and Coun. Travis Dodd were absent from Monday’s meeting.
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Kukreja changed her position from a previous vote on bag tag prices. She supported Farmer’s motion during a Dec. 1 budget meeting to proceed with a one dollar — or 40 per cent — increase to the price.
“When I drive around the town, I do see people recycling. The whole intent of the garbage tag was to encourage people to recycle,” Kukreja says. “I think that everybody is doing it. I find $3.50 is a lot, where people are struggling for food … we are talking about a living wage, we’re talking about increasing minimum wage and at the same time we are increasing our garbage tags, which would impact a lot of folks.”
Farmer says the community is paying for garbage one way or another: either through a property tax bill or by purchasing bag tags “to specifically apply to the garbage that we ourselves are creating.”
“I think we have an option here to not shift the responsibility for the cost of disposing onto our neighbours,” Farmer says.
Owen Sound’s Director of Corporate Services Kate Allan told councillors the decision would require about $100,000 more from the levy for waste management in 2024 — an estimated 0.3 per cent increase for property tax payers. That would cost an average assessed home owner $9.51 more on the annual tax bill — or about 79 cents a month.
Koepke, who opposed the price increase and asked for a recorded vote on the bylaw: “I believe that people don’t get enough for their taxes as it is. And, if this goes into tax base, so be it. People are paying enough with their taxes and their bag tags, and everything else. And I will remain at this service being provided by the city.”
Merton says she believes the issue of bag tags, is part of a larger discussion about whether or not garbage collection is a core municipal service.
“Is it time we look again at the principles of waste management being part of a core service?” Merton wonders.
With the bylaw voted down, procedural rules prevent council from re-opening the discussion about a bag tag increase to $3.50 each for a year. But, councillors could still technically pursue a different number.
