CHANGES TO CITY TRASH PICKUP FEES SUGGESTED

A citizens Solid Waste Task Force Monday recommended the Cape Girardeau City Council implement volume-based pricing for solid-waste service.

The council will consider adoption of the task force's recommendations Dec. 21.

Calvin Chapman, chairman of the task force, said the group generally approved of the city's solid-waste operations.

The task force was formed last summer to review various volume-based pricing alternatives and the city's role in a regional solid-waste district.

"We've done a lot of research and looked at what a lot of other cities are doing, and we found that many cities in Missouri have not really focused like Cape Girardeau has," Chapman said.

He said the committee learned that 18 percent of all waste in the landfill is yard waste and 40 percent is newsprint.

"We're not really recycling like we should, folks," Chapman said.

One way to encourage recycling is through volume-based pricing, which serves as an incentive for residents to reduce their waste volume.

Chapman said that where volume-based pricing was introduced in Seattle, Wash., in 1981, 60 percent of the residents had reduced their trash to one container within five years. In 1989, 80 percent of Seattle residents had only one container of trash weekly.

Cape Girardeau has a three-bag limit on trash volume.

Sarah Holt, a member of the task force, said the committee's research changed many members' notions about city solid-waste operations.

"I think it's fair to say most members of this task force went in with the preconceived thought that we were paying too much for trash service," she said.

But Holt said the task force found that the city's rate of $10.54 per month for weekly, three-bag trash collection is a fair base rate for the "average Cape Girardeau household."

The task force recommended that the city:

Maintain the current charge of $10.54 for collection of no more than three containers of trash weekly and unlimited recycling collection.

20Charge an additional $2 per bag for those that exceed the three-bag limit; strictly enforce the volume limit; and reduce the limit within two years as the cost of trash service increases.

Continue operation of solid-waste service rather than bid the service to private haulers.

Clearly specify solid-waste and recycling services offered by the city, including commercial services and charges.

Implement a citywide education effort to inform the public of solid-waste services, costs and regulations.

Review upcoming issues regarding household hazardous waste problems and regulations that will be implemented in January 1994 under the Missouri solid-waste law.

At least one citizen at Monday's council meeting said she was "disappointed" with the task force recommendations. Lynnette Berry of 822 Pheasant Cove repeatedly has criticized the council for raising trash fees and cutting collection service this year.

She criticized the task force report Monday as a "rubber stamp" of the actions of four council members she claimed are "running the city." Berry also said she intends to circulate a petition to recall the four council members.

"All these people did was rubber stamp what (councilmen) David Limbaugh, Mary Wulfers, Al Spradling and Melvin Kasten wanted," she said. "There are four council members, I just named them, who are running the city.

"I feel the citizens of Cape have a right to say who can sit on the council and who can't, and I'm going to proceed with this recall petition, especially after tonight when I heard this report by the committee."

Berry said that voter approval last month of a proposal to switch from at-large to zone council representation conveyed the public's dissatisfaction with the city council.

When asked by Limbaugh, Holt denied that any councilman ever tried to sway the task force in its recommendations. "I don't rubber stamp anything," she said.

Limbaugh said he thought Berry's "inferences of conspiracy" were "interesting."

After the meeting, the councilman said he was surprised that Berry intends to have the four council members recalled.

"I've always been under the impression that recalls were used to remove council members for impropriety or illegal activity," he said. "The four people that have been cited have done nothing wrong, in my opinion.

"It's very unusual to have a recall petition in a situation like this."

Wulfers said after the meeting that she believed the Elect a Neighbor Committee, which promoted the zone election issue last month, has intended all along to remove the four council members cited by Berry.

"We'll see how it plays out," she said. "I'm not surprised."

"I'll be happy to face it full-bore," said Spradling.

Tom M. Meyer, a member of the Elect a Neighbor Committee, denied any committee involvement in the recall petition.

Kasten didn't attend Monday's meeting, and the other council members Doug Richards, Melvin Gateley and Mayor Gene Rhodes were silent on the issue.

But one audience member, Felix Kinsley who's also a member of the city's Historic Preservation Commission and attends nearly all the council meetings defended the council members. "I think what Miss Berry is saying is a bunch of bull," he said.