Bag tags proposal to come to Thunder Bay city council in March
Administration can't start changing garbage collection until council decides what to do with bag tags
The adoption of Thunder Bay's municipal budget for 2017 comes with some tweaks to garbage collection in the city, but those changes aren't happening yet.
One item in the budget — that council ratified on Tuesday — was to reduce the limit for residential curbside garbage collection from three containers to two.
That can't happen until city councillors decide whether to implement a bag tag system, which permits residents to put more containers at the curb than the city allows, but for a price. That discussion is expected to start in March.
"We will go to two [garbage containers], but the date in which we start that will depend on the motion that comes back from the bag tags," said Jason Sherband, Thunder Bay's manager of solid waste and recycling.
"Because we'd have to roll those out at the same time."
City administration has been working for some time on changes to the municipal solid waste system in order to bring it in line with operations in other cities and those favoured by the province.
The budget now has city taxes paying for municipal recycling programs instead of dump tipping fees. Those will now go exclusively to projects at the landfill, such as expansions to the treatment system that deals with water that leaches out of the trash as well as the collection system of harmful gas.
Site capping and general maintenance projects are also required under provincial rules.
Further changes encapsulated in the new budget include changing garbage collection routes and eliminating one truck and the two positions assigned to it, at a savings of $150,000.
Those job cuts are expected to be dealt with through attrition, Sherband said.