As anticipated, we will see our rates jump by 5% this spring if the outgoing board can put its numbers together by the final meeting the 18th of December. During a work session today, a committee composed of the board and engineering consultants as well as outside counsel, Dan Olsen discussed assessing commercial haulers a 5% franchise fee, whether to contract directly with Waste Connections to convert Beaver Hill to a transfer station or submit an RFP and the closure of Joe Ney and Beaver Hill solid waste dumps.

The organizers of the meeting, solid waste liaison, Cam Parry, and department staff Cheryl Westgard and Scott Murray were curiously unprepared for the meeting in that they had not prepared any fiscal analysis that would have been beneficial to serious discussion. The meeting essentially determined that staff would have to produce a “down and dirty” estimate of all possible operating scenarios. It was also decided that “timing is critical” and the dirty estimate must be ready for the final board meeting of the year.

John Sweet and Melissa Cribbins were both in the audience and agreed to attend the down and dirty number crunching session scheduled for next Monday.

Is the hurry because the incoming board would not make the same decision or is it so that the outgoing members can make the decision and take the heat for an unpopular decision off of the new board? Either way, we can thank the current board for putting Coos County in the unenviable position of shipping its solid waste to unsightly foreign landfills instead of converting it to inert ash while raising our rates at the same time.