Now, before you answer – a little background.

Back in 2007, the Decatur City Commission passed an ordinance requiring multi-family dwellings throughout the city provide recycling services to their residents. However, the ordinance did not require that multi-family properties use the City of Decatur’s sanitation services. If they wanted, they could contract with third party collection services, as long as paper, glass, metal, and plastic recycling was offered.

Flash forward to this past Monday when Asst. City Manager David Junger was before the commission this past Monday discussing “Sanitation Fee Schedule” for the coming year and the 2.2% fee increase that single-family residential will see on their April 1st tax bill. Concerned about the elevated rate (due primarily to gas prices and less revenue), Mayor Floyd began questioning Mr. Junger and the City Manager Peggy Merriss about the trash and recycling collection at multi-family residences.

Why bring that up? In the words of the mayor “…that’s where the money is.”

“Money in trash and recycling collection?” you may be thinking. Yes. As was discussed in our recent “scavenging post”, recyclables can bring in a good amount of change.

And as was mentioned during the discussion, the reason that third-party companies even consider collecting multi-family trash is because they can collect a tidy profit, especially since it takes just 5 minutes for two guys to collect a huge dumpster of trash and recycling. Compare that to the time it takes the city to collect in a residential neighborhood with as many residents as the Artisan.

With all of that in mind, at the end of the conversation, the mayor asserted that if it was currently costing Decatur tax payers money to allow third-party collection at multi-family dwellings, then maybe they/we should have a conversation about requiring these residences to use the city’s services.

So, with all that in mind, do you think Decatur should mandate multi-family to recycle through the city?