Apartment owners oppose changes to towns garbage contract

The recent decision by Sackville town Council to make significant changes to its garbage collection contract has angered many multi-unit apartment building owners.
"This is certainly going to up our costs. Now we're going to have to pay for private garbage collection on top of the tax increase we already had to cover our garbage costs," apartment building owner and Sackville resident Bill Tapley said on Monday.
At its Sept. 8 meeting, council made a number of announcements concerning changes to the collection of garbage within the municipality, including transferring responsibility for garbage collection of apartment buildings with more than four units (400 units within the town), to the building's owners.
In addition, the town will no longer subsidize the operation of a transfer station within the municipality.
Tapley said the extra cost involved in providing private garbage collection services for his units is substantial and will have to be passed on to his tenants.
Tapley said he was somewhat surprised that the town council had made this decision in private before announcing it at the Sept. 8 regular monthly meeting.
"This has all been done behind closed doors, which wasn't going to happen anymore . . . this new council was supposed to do everything out in the open and now everything is still all behind (closed doors)," he said.
Owner of a 16-unit building Bill Holmes echoed Tapley's sentiments.
"This is stupid; it's just not fair. Many of my tenants are university students who are already dealing with high costs; now they'll have an increase in their housing costs as well," he said.
Holmes said Tuesday that he is fed up with some of the shoddy services he's receiving from the town in exchange for the over $25,000 he pays out each year in property taxes.
"I believe that New Brunswick is the only province who double-taxes apartment owners - that is, we're paying double the rate and half goes to the province, half to the town. And the town won't take a stand on the double taxation issue," he said.
Holmes said he believes that the town decided to exclude buildings containing four or less units so it wouldn't have to deal with a large number of irate apartment owners.
"There are a lot of old houses in Sackville that have two or three apartments in them. The town didn't want to have to deal with about 275 landlords, but they could deal with only 15 or 20. They arbitrarily decided to do this without even talking to us. They arbitrarily went about this in the wrong way," he said.
Merrill Fullerton, liaison councillor for Sackville's public works department said that recent changes to the garbage collection tenders were introduced solely as a way for the town to reduce costs.
"This is a cost-cutting measure and it's one that is necessary if we're to hold the line on our tax rate, which I think we really need to do. We're currently nearing the end of a five-year contract and with the high cost of fuel alone we're anticipating a significant increase in costs for this service," he said, adding that prior to implementing changes to the garbage contract, council had researched how this issue is handled by other Canadian municipalities.
Fullerton explained that under the contract the town pays a set amount for each unit, whether it is a single house or a multi-unit building.
That cost had been locked in for the past five years, as per their current contract.
"It is my estimation and I think it's in the estimation of most of my colleagues, that this is a service we've been over-delivering on for many years. Most other communities do not pick up (the garbage from) apartment buildings . . . we felt that four-unit buildings were a good place to start with." he said.
Fullerton said council expects this decision will prove to be a cost-saving measure for the town in the years to come.
"It really comes down to living within our means. In the last five years alone, those 400 units alone have cost us well over $130,000," Fullerton said.
He also noted that under the new contract tender, the contractors will no longer be required to set up and operate a transfer station in town.
"That decision was made because we didn't want to give an unfair advantage to any of the contractors who are bidding. If we were to include the transfer station requirement it would be loading the deck for the existing contractor, and we wanted this to be balanced and open and fair," he explained.
Representatives from council will meet with the owners of apartment buildings containing more than four units at an information meeting to be held Thursday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. at the town hall.