Trussville City Council takes step toward enacting garbage collection fees

Yahoo

12-03-2025

The following is a story by Chris Basinger, news editor of the Trussville Tribune:
TRUSSVILLE, Ala. (Trussville Tribune) — The Trussville City Council unanimously approved a resolution during Tuesday night's meeting that authorizes the mayor to negotiate a new garbage services contract that could directly bill residents for collection costs.
The city currently pays for residential waste collection and has done so under an agreement made by Mayor Gene Melton's administration over 20 years ago that when the city raised its sales tax by 1 cent and designated it for schools, helping create Trussville City Schools, the city would cover garbage service fees.
Discussions on shifting the cost of collection off the city and onto residents first took shape in the aftermath of last year's failed vote to increase property taxes, which would have gone toward funding three major TCS expansion projects.
Without the additional tax revenue to support bonding at a cost of $90 million, the city has had to explore other options to pursue the projects, which are still needed to accommodate the growing student population.
Out of the three projects, TCS has decided to prioritize the construction of the C-Wing at Hewitt-Trussville High School, which is currently at 104% capacity.
During the council meeting, Mayor Buddy Choat denied a direct link between the money the city would save if it stopped paying for garbage collection and funding for the school projects, instead saying the move was being proposed in an effort to rebuild the city's general fund.
'What I told The Tribune was that we have to get our general fund built back up so we will be able to consider going to the market if we had to borrow money to build a school. This money is not dedicated to building a school. It's not dedicated to pay any debt service that we have now other than to try to get it on our bottom line to build that up,' Choat said.
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However, while discussing ways the city could get the school expansion projects off the ground during his State of the City address last October, Choat said, 'I will tell you that everything is on the table right now. All options are there. We desperately need these projects done and when I say on the table, things like garbage service for example, that has been free for years. Our garbage service this year is budgeted at almost $3 million. We're one of many cities that do furnish free, but it may be time to revisit that.'
The general fund has taken a hit in the last year as the city has been met with a significant decline in sales tax revenue, which makes up about two-thirds of its general fund budget. The decline is being attributed to the post-pandemic economy.
In FY24, the city budgeted for sales tax revenues of $33.6 million in FY24 but only took in $30.9 million.
This fiscal year, the city budgeted sales tax revenues of $32.4 million, representing a 3% drop, and those struggles are continuing.
'We've had five reporting months so far this [fiscal] year and we've had two record months out of five and we're still $237,000 behind budget for sales tax this year,' Choat said.
With the decline in revenue, the city passed its latest budget with a deficit spend of almost $1 million, believing that the deficit can be made up by taking actions such as this.
Choat also explained that the city has had to budget for guaranteed increases to employee salaries as well as rises in health and property insurance costs.
In addition to those increases, the city has also spent large sums on two pieces of property in recent years–$4 million on Glendale Farms for a potential new elementary school and $5 million on a property on Service Road to prevent the construction of a proposed 500 unit apartment complex.
The city has since agreed to sell the Service Road property to a developer who plans to build about 190 homes, but was only able to make up $3 million on the sale with the mayor saying that city had to match the price the apartment developer was willing to pay but that selling it for the same amount would be too expensive for a housing developer.
'It was kind of a perfect storm for our reserves with the economy happening the way it happened,' Councilor Alan Taylor said.
Choat also spoke on how Trussville has changed since 2002 with the city then having only around 12,000 people as opposed to about 27,000 now.
He said at that time resident garbage collection cost the city around $500,000 annually while now it has shot up to $2.6 million.
'We're looking for ways to trim the fat, so to speak. We've got to build our general fund back up. We don't have the reserves that we've had in the past,' Choat said.
He continued, 'This is not something we're excited to say we're doing, nobody wants to come out here and tell you we're going to charge you now for something that you were getting free, but it's a necessity.'
Choat added that he thinks the rate for customers could be around $30 a month to cover weekly service and debris pickup.
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While debating the resolution, multiple citizens voiced concerns on what they believed was a lack of transparency on the part of the city.
Commentators online and in-person expressed frustration that the only notification they saw regarding the council's impending consideration of the resolution was from a story published by The Tribune a few hours before the meeting.
The city council typically meets for public agenda workshops on Thursdays at 5 p.m. the week preceding regular meetings to preview the business it will attend to.
Meeting agendas are sent out in an email blast on Fridays or Mondays prior to regular meetings, but are not posted on the city's website or on its Facebook page as many other local cities do.
The Tribune did not receive a copy of the resolution until several hours before the council meeting.
During the meeting, the mayor said he would instruct the city clerk to start releasing a preliminary agenda after the workshops on Thursdays.
There was also some confusion regarding what the council was actually voting on.
The text in the meeting agenda released on Monday read 'Resolution to Authorize Garbage Service Fees & Related Billing Services.'
But during the meeting, city councilors said the resolution would only allow the mayor to negotiate a contract with the Cahaba Solid Waste Disposal Authority and AmWaste and that after a contract was written up it would have to return to the council for final approval as an ordinance over two readings.
Several assurances were also made by the council members including that they would explore ways to alleviate costs for those with financial burdens or residents on Medicaid or disability as part of the negotiations and that there would be more messaging when it came back to the council.
'I know none of us like this. It's not easy to deal with the economic realities that have happened to the city, it's not just us, it's nationwide. We all know there's circumstances beyond our control,' Councilor Jaime Anderson said.
'Several things that I will be looking for when you come back with a negotiation, mayor, would be obviously the price, when does it start, how do we let people know, how much money does it offset for our fiscal budget this year…that type of thing.'
A full video of the meeting can be viewed on The Tribune's website here.
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