Riders rent reduction a 'contractual matter', no legal threat: Reynolds
12h ago
The $1.33M rent reduction comes from what the club owed during seasons impacted by the pandemic.
In just over a year, the way the City of Saskatoon bills its customers for garbage and organics programs will likely change.
Angela Gardiner, the city’s general manager of utilities and environment, says a decision to fund garbage and organics collection through property taxes made three years ago was rescinded in August.
“Council made the decision that the future organics program for residential properties as well as the black bin garbage program … that the funding model for those would be switching to a utility,” Gardiner said.
With the change to a utility model, only those properties that get the services will pay for them.
“So commercial properties and hotels and multi-family condos and whatnot would no longer be paying for the curbside services. So (that means) the black bins and the future green bins,” she explained.
How it’s all going to work is what council has to decide — and there are two options. The first option is to switch both curbside organics and garbage collection over to utilities at the same time in 2023.
The other option is to switch the new, city-wide organics program over to a utility in the spring of 2023 first, then follow with garbage collection in 2024.
“With that option, there’s also the ability to implement a variable rate for the garbage. What that means is we could give residents the option of maintaining the current size of their black bins or they could reduce the size and pay a lesser fee,” she explained.
The intent of the report on the programs is to get some direction from council on which of the phase-in options it wants administration to work towards, because of the impact on future property taxes.
Gardiner says other cities like Vancouver and Calgary follow a similar model and provide options for different cart sizes.
“Many municipalities are moving towards a utility-funded model for garbage collection because it provides an opportunity for people to control their costs a little bit more, and only those people that get those services are getting charged,” she added.
The report will be presented to the city’s Government and Priorities Committee on Monday.