ROCKINGHAM — At the last City Council meeting, Assistant City Manager John Massey expressed frustration with the conditions that led to city staff’s recommendation that the city reduce its code enforcement jurisdiction by 12.3 percent.

Among those conditions was a tipping fee the city only recently began incurring from the county when its nuisance abatement contractor disposes of household garbage, which Massey said hasn’t been charged — to his recollection — in the 20 years he’s been with the city.

County policy requires that all who dispose of “construction debris” pay a fee of $0.03 per pound, but Massey said it wasn’t until December 2017 that the county began charging the City of Rockingham’s contractor for dumping.

“From 1999 to 2017, I don’t recall receiving a single invoice for disposal of materials removed from property as part of a nuisance abatement process,” Massey said in an email Tuesday, adding that dumping was free regardless of whether the garbage came from within city limits or within the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction and regardless of whether the garbage was construction or domestic.

Massey told the council on April 9 he’s gotten “no clear answer” from the county as to why the contractor has started being charged a fee, and added that fee is applied inconsistently. In an email, Massey explained that the city’s nuisance abatement contractor only disposes of domestic materials that could be considered a public nuisance, not demolition debris.

The contractors that do dispose of demolition and construction materials for the city include tipping fees in their contracts for the job, according to Massey.

On Tuesday, Public Works Director Jerry Austin explained that the fee is not a sign of any change in policy on the part of the county but in part matter of “correcting errors” from the past.

“All construction and demolition materials require a tipping fee to be paid. Years ago, there may have been times the city was not charged for some of their disposal that they should have been,” Austin said in an email. “This can be looked at as a combination of correcting errors from the past and also staying consistent with tipping fees for all construction and demolition related materials.”

Austin said that, by his count, the City of Rockingham has been charged $3,482 since “early 2017” when they began charging (Massey said this figure sounded accurate, though he did not have the figures in front of him). Austin added that many of the city’s loads included a mix of construction and domestic garbage, which is likely why there seems to be inconsistency with the application of the fee.

The issue began with the contractor bringing a load of shingles and construction debris to the landfill, according to Austin, which he said was questioned by city staff at the time. That charge was waived, Austin said, to give the city the “benefit of the doubt” because most of the materials in that dump were not construction or demolition related, but with the understanding that from that point on loads with these materials would incur the required fee.

The other factors in the decision to cut the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) were the poor growth projections in the areas, large amounts of “urban blight” and several large properties on the brink of requiring costly abatement, few vacant land tracts for development, changes in state law which reduced the opportunities for municipalities to annex land, and a declining local economy over the last 30 years.

Massey said at the council meeting April 9 that the City of Rockingham budgets about $35,000 each year to deal with the code enforcement responsibilities of its ETJ, and over the last three-and-a-half years, the city has spent about $191,000 total — going over budget nearly every year — demolishing buildings in the ETJ.

During that same time span, city staff found that the city issued a total of 107 citations for code violations, 72 of which were within this area. Of those, 22 cost the city $27,000 to abate, compared to the $5,100 total spent abating properties in the rest of the city’s jurisdiction.

In an interview Tuesday, Massey said the tipping fees at the landfill are “one piece of the bigger puzzle” that led the city to cut 12.3 percent from its ETJ.

“It adds He said of the new expense, “so be it,” but noted that in relation to abating properties in the ETJ, the cost “adds up”.

“It’s just one of the factors,” he said. “We can’t stay on the same path we’ve been on because of these circumstances.”

The city will hold a public hearing on the ordinance to cut the areas from the ETJ on May 14. Barring the results of the public hearing, the ordinance will go into effect on Oct. 1. The areas cut will then become the county’s responsibility.

File photo Assistant City Manager told the Rockingham City Council on April 9 that the city was being charged a tipping fee for disposal of garbage which had not been done in his 20 years with the city. Public Works Director Jerry Austin said the application of the fee in early 2017 is part of an effort to “correct errors” from the past.
https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_IMG_9396-9.jpgFile photo Assistant City Manager told the Rockingham City Council on April 9 that the city was being charged a tipping fee for disposal of garbage which had not been done in his 20 years with the city. Public Works Director Jerry Austin said the application of the fee in early 2017 is part of an effort to “correct errors” from the past.
Tipping fee not charged for 20 years

Gavin Stone

Editor

Reach Gavin Stone at 910-817-2674 or [email protected].