People who want to recycle are upset over sorting and hauling their recyclables to the Town of St. Paul transfer station, only to be told that glass, tin and plastic are now trash and will be sent to the landfill. That’s a legitimate beef for residents who are taking the time and trouble to recycle these goods when it’s been advertised they’re being accepted and it’s little wonder that town councillors are receiving calls about it.
This issue apparently came up at the Town of St. Paul council meeting, but not until after council closed the public portion of the meeting and made a motion to go into camera. The Journal reporter attending the meeting left when the council motioned to go in-camera, and two hours later, council closed for the night. In the time in between, it seems as though several items came up for discussion that didn’t deal with land, property or personnel (i.e. legitimate in-camera issues).
When questioned about what was discussed after the public meeting, Town CAO Ron Boisvert said he had forgotten to bring up a couple of items and that a councillor had happened to bring up the issue of recycling after the public meeting.
Fair enough – of course, from time to time, an item might accidentally be left off the agenda or a councillor may remember an issue he/she wanted to report after the fact. But this comes up too often in Town of St. Paul council meetings. The agenda items for the Town of St. Paul are very sparse, with usually just the administrator’s report items included, consisting of one line explanations and no correspondence attached, followed by the minutes of the past meeting.
Compare this to the County of St. Paul’s approach. The county sends emails out a week prior to each council meeting with all the relevant correspondence attached to each item and recommended actions on most files. That email is also sent to the press. County councillors may bring up items in-camera or after meetings that are of the public interest, but it seems to happen more rarely because of the preparation that goes into preparing a detailed agenda that the press, for one, appreciates. You can compare and contrast examples of the two municipalities’ agendas online here:
Town of St. Paul agenda: https://www.spjournal.com/pdf/stp/TownAgenda/27012011.pdf
County of St. Paul agenda: http://stpaul19county.civicweb.net/FileStorage/3EC13F5BBE6346DEB61BDC9821F2DBD7-Regular%20Council%20-%2011%20Jan%202011.html
The town could take a page out of County of St. Paul’s book in regard to agendas.
As for recycling, we can agree the Town of St. Paul is right to want to be honest to its ratepayers and to provide a good bang for a buck for recycling services – nobody wants to recycle things that are going to end up in the landfill, which is why the town says it’s no longer accepting glass, tin or plastic. But let’s consider a few things that have come up since town decided to take recycling operations over from St. Paul Abilities Network (SPAN): 1) the service is no longer offered in town, meaning those without a vehicle may not be able to recycle; 2) local schools are no longer getting a pick-up service for the incredible amount of paper and cardboard they produce; 3) there’s now less of a push to divert items from the landfill, with glass, paper and tin recycling drop-offs eliminated. That’s incredible, especially given information in Alberta Environment’s Too Good to be Waste document, which states “at least 80 per cent of material currently sent to municipal landfills can be recovered.”
All of this adds up to making a person wonder if the town made the right move in taking over the operation of this service. It seems like the Town of St. Paul wants to save some dollars, but let’s face it, recycling is going to equate to a money-losing service until the province steps up or changes are made to the recycling system. Meanwhile, when SPAN operated the service, it was striving to divert as much as possible from the landfill, even if it meant storing recyclables until the market picked up, while also giving its clients some meaningful work to do by handling the service.
The question is: just how much money are taxpayers willing to lose to protect recycling? Those who want to see the service protected, no matter the cost, can lobby the town to continue to pick up glass, tin and plastic and actively search for a market for these goods. But right now, the best thing citizens can do is to use their own individual power in employing the “reduce” and “reuse” portion of the cycle and try to cut back on consumption generally.
