The City of Truth or Consequences’ fiscal-year 2027 budget, approved July 29, estimates it will spend nearly $4.5 million on its solid waste department–a $1-million jump over last year’s budget.
Increases spotted in the budget:
- Full time wages, up 15 percent or about $100,000, from $561,000 to over $655,000
- Overtime up $3,500, from $4,500 to $8,000
- FICA up $3,000, from over $35,000 to almost $38,000
- PERA up $5,000, from about $66,000 to $71,000
- Health insurance up $62,000 or 28 percent, from about $160,000 to over $222,000
- Unemployment insurance up about $3,600, from $2,400 to $6,000
- South Central Solid Waste Authority fees up $50,000, from $1.25 million to $1.3 million
- Other contractual services, up nearly $17,000, from $100,000 to $116,760
- Purchase of vehicles, up over $400,000, from $300,000 to $705,500
The operations and maintenance costs for FY2027 are over $3.5 million and then $945,741 will be transferred out to the general fund to pay for utilities, administration costs, fuel and insurance, bringing the total expense to $4,454,191.
I predicted, around 2011, while working for the Herald newspaper, that if the people allowed the city to build the “collection center,” or transfer station/weigh station and to take over trash collection for the area, that it would become a second “cash cow” or source of bilking the people out of their money.
Activist Ron Fenn circulated a petition that forced a special election on the $1.6 million borrowing the city commission had approved to build the collection center. One of the big concerns was its proximity to the city’s only well field and its French drains that allow liquid from the trash floor to go right into the ground. The people voted for it anyway.
The fees charged to pick up trash containers went from about $92,500 in 2013 to about $337,000 in 2014, and have gone up from there, but increases focused on polycart customers, since, by law, they can’t not use the city service. See: https://sierracountysun.org/feature/tor-solid-waste-department-operation-costs-and-service-fees-out-of-control/
In the FY2027 budget, polycart customers will pay over $1.3 million and commercial metal dumpster customers will pay about $500,000. Trash collection fees have therefore gone from $337,000 to $1.8 million in 14 years.
The city has done very little to keep costs down or to track what customers should pay for various services.
Some facts from the Parkhill rate study that covered years 2023 to 2028, which is at the end of this article:
- Page 98, recycling will cost nearly $236,000 in FY2027, but only $25,000 in sold recycled materials is expected and only $90,000 from businesses that opt to pay to have a recycling dumpster. The study estimated only 30 percent of existing businesses with free recycling dumpsters would keep them in 2025, when the new rates went into effect. The city has been mum on how many commercial recycling customers it has and the FY2026 and FY2027 budgets did not break out the revenue and expense for this service.
- Page 99, Polycart customers will overpay about $513,000 every year from 2023 to 2028. Each year polycart users will pay 100 percent of the recycling costs, which are about $236,000 in FY2027. Polycart customers will pay 26 percent of the solid waste department’s $730,500 disposal and hauling costs in FY2027. Polycart customers will pay 38 percent of the $352,000 administration costs in FY2027, 26 percent of the $275,000 collection center garbage operations and 100 percent of the $70,000 in cart maintenance costs. Total “required” revenue from polycart users is about $853,000, the study said, but acknowledged that the city would charge them over $1.3 million. By FY2028, polycart customers will have overpaid $2.5 million or more.
- Page 103, Dumpster collection, from 2023 to 2028, would undercharge customers, although rate increases would go into effect in 2025. The commercial dumpster collection service loses about $200,000 a year. By FY2028, dumpster customers will have underpaid about $912,000.
- Page 103, Collection Center customers, from 2023 to 2028, underpay about $300,000 a year. By 2028 they will have been undercharged $1.44 million.
Polycart customers should insist the city do the following to make the solid waste department charges somewhat more fair and equitable:
- Insist the city build a construction and demolition waste dump instead of paying for that tonnage to be trucked to the South Central Solid Waste Authority landfill. C&D landfills are much easier to get permission to build, since they are inert and don’t require liners and monitoring wells and methane emissions equipment. This will cut down on the $300,000 a year loss at the collection center, since less tonnage will go into the SCSWA trucks.
- Insist a green yard waste facility be created. Less will go into the SCSWA trucks and the city can chip it and sell the mulch.
- Polycart customers should insist that the city conduct a recycling “audit.” How much of the materials are actually being recycled and how much is going into the truck to SCSWA? Keep the recycling portion that is making about $25,000 a year and discontinue the rest. This would save polycart customers about $240,000 a year.
- Have the city make a deal with the City of Elephant Butte. Currently EB has hired a private contractor to pick up its polycarts. This private contractor charges about $35 a month per 95-gallon container, the same price T or C charges. Therefore the T or C and Village of Williamsburg polycart customers, who are required by law to use T or C’s polycart services, are subsidizing EB polycart customers. T or C should require that EB use its polycart services or disallow its private contractor to take its waste to the collection center.
- Polycart customers should insist that each revenue stream, polycart, commercial dumpster, recycling dumpster, weigh-station customer, pay rates that cover their costs. As it is, the polycart customers of T or C and the Village of Williamsburg are subsidizing and covering the losses of all other customers. This is vastly unfair and exploitative. Both T or C and the VOW have used their authority to pass law that force its residents to be captive payers. This is authoritarian and undemocratic.
- T or C and VOW solid waste customers should insist the city be much more transparent. The solid waste department should give written and verbal reports on how much each revenue stream cost and how much it made–dumpsters, collection center customers using the weigh station, polycart customers, recycling tonnage taken in and tonnage sold or tossed in trucks to the SCSWA and at what cost.
The solid waste department has NEVER given such a report since the collection center was built 14 years ago, which is why its rates became skewed to exploit polycart customers and to favor other customers, primarily private business owners.