Sudbury, Ont. councillor 'blindsided' by proposed $5 gate fee for the city landfill

A Sudbury city councillor says she was "blindsided" by a proposed budget item that would add a $5 gate fee at the city's landfill on July 1.

If it goes ahead, the fee would be in addition to the regular tipping fees residents pay to dispose of extra waste at the landfill.

The city estimates the fee would generate $475,000 in revenues in 2024 and $950,000 in 2025.

It was a single-line item in the city's proposed budget; on page 633.

Ward 7 Coun. Natalie Labbée said councillors only learned about the new fee through an internal memo last week, long after council approved the 2024-2025 budget in December.

She said that memo was part of a pattern of being "blindsided by these types of relatively small issues" brought forward by city staff.

"It is not the job of the city council to be line-by-line auditors. It's just not," Labbée said.

"We are governors of the board of directors for the corporation, and we are only as strong as the information that's presented to us."

Labbée added that memo was leaked to former councillor Robert Kirwan, who posted it to his Valley East Today Facebook group, raising public concern about the proposed fee.

"That's why the city halted… a communications blitz that was going to go out to get people prepared for this new fee," she said.

Labbée said she is concerned a fee to enter the landfill would lead to more illegal dumping in wooded areas around the city.

"We're hearing so much from people across the community that because they have such long waits at the landfill site that they're just giving up," she said.

"They're going in the back roads and they're just dumping their garbage in our green space and in our trail systems."

Councillors alerted about gate fee, say staff

In an email to CBC News city spokesperson Kelli Sheppard said staff " identified changes in service level and fees throughout the process leading up to the publication of the draft budget."

Sheppard said councillors had four weeks to review the draft budget and staff provided a weekly set of answers to councillors' questions about the document.

The gate fee was addressed in the first question and answer document staff provided to council on Nov. 23, Sheppard added.

"Council can amend any part of a draft budget with a majority vote. Council did not amend the 2024-25 Budget to exclude this fee," she said.

Sudburian Diane Dubuc, as she was bringing items to the landfill, told Radio-Canada she thinks the fee is reasonable.

"$5 is a cup of coffee you get in the morning," she said.

Motion to kill the fee

At the next council meeting, on June 25, Ward 5 Coun. Mike Parent will put forward a reconsideration motion, meant to kill the proposed gate fee. He'll need a two-thirds majority to consider the motion, and then a simple majority to pass it.

"I think we see this as a core service that we are expected to have within what we pay in property taxes," he said about accessing the city landfill.

Parent said the same fee was proposed to council in 2022, for the 2023-2024 budget, and was rejected at that time.

If the city exceeds the current space at the landfill, staff have estimated it would cost about $200 million to build a new site.

"We don't want to go down that route," Parent said.

But he said he doesn't believe new fees are the best way to divert waste from the landfill.

"I think we need to put a bit more of a targeted effort on multi-residential [buildings] where there really isn't that same level of requirement for things like recycling or composting," he said.