The City of Española will need to spend at least $150,000 of its Environmental Gross Receipts Tax revenue to replace trash cans for all city residents.
Before the North Central Solid Waste Authority was formed, the city dealt with solid waste and provided the heavy-duty plastic trash bins, also called polycarts, to residents. Those polycarts were specially designed for use with the city’s trash pick-up trucks. Since the Authority took over, the old polycarts have been getting damaged because they’re not compatible with the Authority’s trucks.
“It’s not the constituents’ fault for the changes,” councilor Pedro Valdez said at a city Public Works committee May 16. “It’s the city that has to take care of this.”
Valdez said when the city first started dealing with solid waste, residents were responsible for buying their own polycarts. He said it’s only fair that the city replace the polycarts instead of making residents buy another cart.
Authority director Gino Romero said in an interview that while it’s not the city’s responsibility to pay for the new carts, the Authority can’t afford to replace them and because the Authority’s service is automated, the new carts are necessary.
“If we had to buy them, city residents would ultimately have to pay for them,” Romero said. “Prices would probably go up, which they may anyway in June.”
The city currently has 600 polycarts at the Authority storage facility in Alcalde and is considering ordering another 1,200. The goal is to eventually replace polycarts, at $50 each, for over 3,000 households in Española.
Not everyone thinks that’s prudent.
“I think it would be a good idea to put a hold on this,” councilor Corey Lewis said at the meeting. “We’re going through our budget process and this is a lot of money.”
After the replacement, residents would be responsible for future replacements should a polycart be lost or damaged.
The city will determine who gets a cart based on the city’s water department records, Valdez said. He said when a resident opens a water account with the city, it automatically opens an account with the Authority.
Interim City Manager Joe Duran has a running list of city polycarts that need to be replaced, but certain households will be given priority.
“We were told they would go by the condition of the existing polycart and also to the elderly and handicapped,” councilor Robert Seeds said.