Waste Managment Board Reconsiders Household Hazardous Waste Fee May 28
– The Waste Management Board will adopt its 2014-15 budgets and try again to pass a household hazardous waste fee. –
The Alameda County Waste Management Authority (WMA) Board and the Energy Council (EC) will meet on Wednesday, May 28, 3:00 p.m. in the StopWaste Offices at 1537 Webster Street in downtown Oakland. The public is invited to attend and comment on agenda items including the proposed Household Hazardous Waste Fee (HHWF).
As of April 23, 2014, 51,203 protests against the HHWF had been received at the Stopwaste.org offices. The WMA attorney advised that no ballot approval is required for this property related fee; the protest process is sufficient. At that April 23 meeting, the Board voted 11-4 (2 absent) for the fee, as proposed by staff, which meant the vote failed due to the requirement of 2/3 of members or 12 votes being required. The four “no” votes were cast by the Castro Valley Sanitary District, Dublin, Livermore and Pleasanton. Their opposition is believed to have been due to the massive protests against the new fee, and the unequal treatment of different residential units (multi-family/single-family allocation of costs).
The three HHW fee options to be offered by staff at the May 28 meeting are:
- the original ordinance defeated at the April Board meeting;
- the original ordinance plus a directive to staff to attempt to negotiate an agreement with the two Rental Housing Associations to study their HHW disposal;
- the original ordinance plus an attempt to study rental housing HHW disposal, plus the HHW facilities would be opened on Sunday for one year.
Comments on the HHWF or other agenda items may be submitted to the Waste Management Board, 1537 Webster Street, Oakland, CA 94612.
Or to Piedmont’s representative, Councilmember Tim Rood, trood@ci.piedmont.ca.us.
Read more about the proposed $9.55 fee:
OPINION: Questions Raised Concerning New Waste Management Tax
Is this any surprise? They will just keep bringing it back over and over until they wear us down and get the “fee” passed.