City Council on first reading decided to add annual fees to access the brush/mulch pile.
It is part of a plan to make residents and others purchase an access “key” card to get into the locked gate.
Chris Cooley, who works for River Valley Transit, said the fees are needed to issue the cards to enter the brush disposal and mulch collection area at 1500 W. Third St.
Cooley said the information will be put online so people can review it and download the forms from the city website or go to River Valley Transit headquarters to pick up a form to begin the process.
Registration will require a license plate number and other information not specified at the meeting.
For city residents, to get a card would be a $10 registration fee for the first year and $5 renewal fee for years after initial registration. The $10 fee will be waived for those who sign up on the form by the end of June. The $5 renewal fee will apply in 2022.
The same $10 annual fee is for commercial property owners with less than 20 combined acres.
The price jumps for those with more land and landscaping companies. Commercial or industrial property owners with greater than 20 combined acres would pay a $1,000-a-year fee.
A landscape business contractor with a business city address will pay $2,000 a year.
A landscape business contractor with a business address outside of the city will pay $5,000 annually.
City residents and residential rental property owners and commercial property owners can add another person on the registry, Cooley said.
It must be a person in the household or who works at the rental property. This does not apply to landscape contractors who will have to pay the contractor fee, Cooley said.
The site has surveillance cameras and officials spot check plate numbers.
The cards are not transferable to loan out to friends or neighbors, Councilwoman Bonnie Katz, chairwoman of the public works committee, said.
“I know people are wondering why we are doing this so close to spring clean up,” Katz said.
The city had a glitch with getting parts for the computer program to make the gate work. The gate arrived but not the part, she said.
“We would like to get people to start using the mulch,” she said.
The grinding of brush to make the mulch is done at Wayne Township in Clinton County and cost the city about $18,000 a year, according to Adam Winder, general manager of River Valley Transit.
The fees that are proposed will help defray cost of recycling and service operation, Katz said.
The plan required first reading of an ordinance amending the general fee schedule. Councilmen Jon Mackey and Vincent Pulizzi were absent. The vote was 5-0.
After council’s second reading, hopefully, people can start to use card and go through the gate, Katz said.
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