Council will consider and finalise other matters as part of its Waste Strategy in 2022 including the hard waste collection in the former Urana Shire area, and the skip bins in the villages in the former Corowa Shire area.
At its extraordinary meeting on November 2, council considered a report advising the Halve Waste group collaborative contract is due for renewal with tender documents schedules to be submitted for final internal and legal review in January.
In his report, council’s director engineering services Steve Carmichael said the time is ideal to harmonise the services offered between the two former councils as they are “reasonably different, including the charges to ratepayers”.
His suggested option ‘Accept that FOGO (food organics and garden organics) will become mandatory by 2030, accept that the rural skip bins in former Corowa are not best practice, and accept that the yearly hard waste collection in the former Urana is not best practice. Therefore, implement the following: bring former Corowa and former Urana onto the new Halve Waste contract with the three services of waste, comingled recycling and FOGO to all eligible residents, replace the skip bins with kerbside collection in the villages, service rural properties on the roads between towns and villages and remove the hard waste collections. Then, once the tendered prices are received recalculate the total cost for the services and come up with new domestic waste charges to be applied evenly across the council areas’.
“Due to time constraints, and that waste collection is a regulated and mandated service, council should implement best practice collection,” Mr Carmichael said.
“Council will develop a communication and engagement strategy to engage with the community about the changes and one forum is proposed to be through the Rates Committee, and the Integrated Planning and Reporting process as the draft next set of plans are developed in the first half of 2022 with the new council.
“This will ensure consultation is all part of the one package to avoid doubling up and any potential confusion.”
He said that council’s two existing collection contractors have been made aware of the upcoming changes and their associated timeframes.
“The new Halve Waste collection contract project is being led by Albury City Council, who have engaged Kell Moore to ensure the legal aspects of the process are covered, and Alison Lee from Crowe has been appointed as the probity advisor for the process,” the director engineering services said.
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