Some directors in the Cowichan Valley Regional District’s electoral areas are taking issue with the proposed fees for the new three-stream waste collection program that is being introduced next year, and staff have been directed to take another look at the fee structure.
Staff were recommending at the electoral areas service committee meeting on Dec. 4 that an annual fee of $345 for those households that will receive the service in the nine electoral areas be implemented as of Jan. 1, 2025, even though almost half of them won’t receive all of the services until later in the year.
Travis Tanner, a senior environmental technologist with the CVRD, said that although implementing a flat fee for the first year of the service distributes costs to households that will not receive the full benefits of those costs until later, it's not possible to construct a fee structure that would keep all utility fees within the $345 objective while accurately billing each individual household based on the level of service they receive, and the cost of their new collection totes.
“Staff recommends approving the fee of $345 per household for 2025,” he said. “This fee is within the range of utility fees shared with the public during consultation.”
As of June, 2025, the CVRD will collect source-separated garbage, food and yard waste, and recyclables, including the separate monthly collection of glass containers, from all eligible households in the nine electoral areas and Malahat for the first time.
The CVRD currently collects recyclables from eligible households in all of the electoral areas, and garbage from eligible households in electoral areas D, E, F, G and I.
Ben Maartman, director for electoral area H (North Oyster/Diamond), pointed out that if the CVRD moved forward with the flat fee of $345 for all participating households in the electoral areas for the three-stream service beginning on Jan. 1, a little more than half of the approximately 14,200 participating households would not receive any garbage collection until June, even though they will be paying for the service as of Jan. 1.
“This is not about opting out for an individual, this is about 8,200 households that are going to be looking at the CVRD and saying ‘we just got billed for a whole year for six months worth of service’,” he said.
“It puts our credibility as an organization [in question]. I’m not for this at all. [The service fee] needs to reflect what we’re actually charging people for the service when they start receiving it, not six months before.”
Sierra Acton, director for electoral area B (Shawnigan Lake) said she agreed with Maartman, and made a motion to have the issue referred back to staff to come up with a more equitable fee structure.
“I don’t care even if it's 10 households, this is so blatantly unfair that we can’t support it,” she said. “Being billed that far in advance is not how we want to represent our constituents.”
Darcy Mooney, the general manager of the CVRD’s operations department, said he wanted to clarify to the committee that the district will begin incurring costs associated with the new service as of Jan. 1.
He said waste-collection trucks have already been scheduled to be delivered soon and the totes will need to be put together and distributed, among other issues that will need to be dealt with.
“All of these things create costs, and then there are interest charges [on the long-term borrowing costs for the service] and those sorts of things,” Mooney said.
“If there was even the ability for us to bill as of June 1, the costs would really be double for next year because the $345 fee reflects the entire cost that is absorbed across the whole of the electoral areas for 2025. Any modifications to that would still have to address the entirety of those costs.”
The committee decided to send the issue back to staff in a tight vote, and staff said they would do their best to review it and prepare a report in time for the regular board meeting on Dec. 11.
