Avoyelles Police Jury President asks jurors to develop garbage plan

As expected, Avoyelles Parish Police Jury President Charles Jones asked his eight colleagues to be prepared to knuckle down in January to determine how the parish can best address a potential garbage crisis in two years.

No action on the issue was requested or taken at the jury’s Dec. 11 meeting.

Jones noted that the easy thing to do would be to walk away if the parishwide solid waste program costs more than the jury has in tax revenue to support it. However, he said he believes the Police Jury owes it to the public to try to find a solution that will enable the parish to provide residential garbage collection as a public service. “I am just not satisfied with sitting down and doing nothing,” Jones said. “We will try to find something to address this situation.”

The voters approved renewing the jury’s 1-cent sales tax, with 3/4-cent to support the garbage program and 1/4-cent for parishwide road and bridge maintenance. However, a new 8-mill tax for the solid waste program was soundly thumped.

“We had wanted to position ourselves for the future with this 8-mill property tax,” Jones said.

The main ingredient in that plan was to build a garbage transfer station at the Parish Barn that would have allowed the jury to break the garbage contract up into three parts -- residential collection, hauling large trailers of trash to the landfill, and a long-term contract with a public landfill.

The first two elements would create more competition, which should result in a lower contract price. The third is the best way to protect against future price hikes, Jones said.

One option Jones said jurors will consider is whether to “spend down” the accumulated $5.2 million reserve in the Solid Waste Fund if the next contract exceeds the available revenue or to take a more proactive approach and dedicate about $2.2 million of that reserve to building the transfer station that would have been funded with proceeds from the failed 8-mill tax.

Since the solid waste contract was renewed, the surplus of revenue over expenditures in that program has been reduced from a few hundred thousand dollars a year to less than $10,000 a year.

Jones noted that once that reserve is spent, there will be nothing to replace it barring the approval of a tax increase or a way to bring the garbage program’s costs within the Police Jury’s resources.

Jones asked jurors to consider volunteering for a special committee -- or “working group” -- that would meet several times early next year. He said a plan for the future should be presented to the full jury by mid-year.