Published: March 27, 2008 11:07 am            

Clark County recycling confusion results in executive session

Charlestown resident Tom Obermeyer received a bill for the mandatory curbside recycling program earlier this month. And he paid it — even though the city isn’t offering curbside recycling pick-up.

The Solid Waste District told him he would receive a refund of the prorated $31 payment by the end of April, he said. Obermeyer only realized he shouldn’t have paid after a neighbor told him, and about 150 other Charlestown residents who should not have received bills for the mandatory recycling program got them in the mail this month as well.

“The county is notorious for recycling billing problems over the last few years,” County Commissioner and Solid

Waste Board President Mike Moore said. “I got more than 50 phone calls just with everyday complaints — people with voluntary requests and mandatory bills.

“We need to at least have a conversation about it. If we don’t do anything about it and it happens again, we don’t have anybody to blame but ourselves.”

Obermeyer and the other residents shouldn’t have received or paid the bill because Charlestown tabled a renewal of the contract for mandatory curbside recycling, and city residents haven’t been getting recycling pick-up since the first of the year.

The city council instead decided to wait and see if the Clark County Solid Waste District can create a voluntary curbside recycling program, which would relieve them of the need to institute a mandatory program and allow residents to choose if they want curbside recycling.

Jeffersonville, Clarksville, Sellersburg and Borden are the municipalities in the county participating in the mandatory curbside-recycling program. Charlestown and the rest of the unincorporated parts of the county are not receiving curbside recycling pickup.

Moore came up with a plan for voluntary curbside recycling for county residents not receiving curbside pickup in the mandatory program earlier this year. County Commissioners voted to end the contract for mandatory curbside recycling in the unincorporated county in 2006, and that contract ended in 2007.

The district sent out flyers to area residents at the end of February encouraging them to express their interest in a voluntary program — at least 4,000 households are needed to start voluntary curbside recycling in the county. About 700 to 800 responses have been received, said district Executive Director Sharon Marra.

Instead of a bill for the mandatory program, Obermeyer should have received an application for the voluntary program, and residents in Jeffersonville who should have only received a bill also got an offer to participate in the voluntary program. And that is part of the reason the Solid Waste District Board is holding an executive session Monday.

“I would like to see the Solid Waste District improved with better communication and better daily operations,” said district board member Ron Grooms. “We need to redefine the director’s position and give the director a list of job duties and responsibilities.”

Currently, Marra is taking the heat. At the meeting Monday, there are also plans to discuss Marra’s position. The board voted to extend her contract for six months at the last meeting, following a similar extension that was voted on by the board last fall.

“She is a champion for Solid Waste, and I don’t mean curbside recycling, I mean Solid Waste period,” said board member Barbara Hollis. “She has done a tremendous job for this county.”

With only two full-time staff members, Marra said the office is doing the best it can. The problems were because of newly annexed areas as well as a computer problem, and the fact that the last time residents were billed the entire county was participating, she said.

“We took the county section of our billing system and told the software people to pull streets,” Marra said. “There’s streets with like names in both cities (Charlestown and Jeffersonville).”

Unfortunately the Sycamore Street in Charlestown and the Sycamore Street in Jeffersonville were both pulled, she said.

Marra said the office is working out the problems with billing and hopes to have refunds mailed to residents who paid for mandatory curbside recycling that aren’t receiving it by the end of April.

“I take responsibility for all the mistakes that happen at this office,” she said. “We do the best we can with two people and one computer.”

        

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