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Bulk Trash Tax and Services Under Review

Kalamazoo City Hall - file photo. Photo by Sehvilla Mann, WMUK
Sehvilla Mann
/
WMUK

The Kalamazoo City Commission is likely to consider soon whether to increase the property tax that pays for bulk trash and recycling service.  And a new rate could come with changes in how trash and recycling are collected.

Public Services Department Administrative Support Manager Wendy Burlingham says single-stream recycling instead of dual-stream is one possibility. So is quarterly rather than monthly bulk trash pickup. Burlingham says while less frequent bulk trash service would help the city’s budget, that’s not the only advantage.

I think it would make the city look cleaner. Because right now, every week, every day of the month you’ve got pickup somewhere. So there’s always trash out somewhere,” she says.

As for recycling, Burlingham says the city surveyed residents last year and found many would prefer a more streamlined collection. However, Burlingham says single-stream pickup would cost more. She says unlike the dual-stream materials, a single stream couldn’t be processed by the city’s local contractor.

Right now the cool thing about dual-stream recycling is that you could buy a box of cereal off the shelf, it’s made here, you recycle it, it goes back to the plant to make another box of cereal. But what happens when you go into single stream, it’s going to have to be shipped out to other places to be sorted,” she says.

The city would also need to retrofit recycling-collection trucks and buy new containers.

Burlingham says the property tax that pays for trash and recycling needs to rise with increasing costs, whether recycling and bulk trash service change or stay the same. The city set the bulk trash millage rate at 1.55 mills in 2007.

The maximum amount it can charge is 2.89 mills, the voter-approved maximum of three mills adjusted by the Headlee Amendment. The city will discuss the millage and the services it covers at a budget meeting January 11.

Sehvilla Mann joined WMUK’s news team in 2014 as a reporter on the local government and education beats. She covered those topics and more in eight years of reporting for the Station, before becoming news director in 2022.
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