Agenda - 02-26-2003-ws2 - Laserfiche WebLink

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recycling or hazardous waste collections. It is economically impractical to continue to raise landfill tipping fees and assume the revenue will follow as eventually all privately controlled waste will find it advantageous to leave. The bridge financing mechanism should not be so small as to leave the Department in a fiscal hole from which it will have to dig itself out using the subsequently selected permanent financing mechanism. There will be still be landfill income that will partly support operations in combination with this proposed bridge financing mechanism, but that will not be enough. In addition, the SWAB believes the bridge financing mechanism should, to the extent practicable, meet the guiding principles. There appear to be three basic financing options from which a hybrid involving any combination of the three could be used to supplement current sources of Departmental income between FY 2003-04 and when the permanent financing mechanism is adopted. Those include: 1. A property tax increase where the Board of Orange County Commissioners earmarked a certain portion of the general tax revenues for solid waste management for a year. 2. Creation of special solid waste tax districts where the tax levied in each district reflected, to a certain degree, the level of service provided within it. 3. Development of availability fees in which each member of each class of system user is charged according to the services they have available. In the short run case of bridge financing, the availability fee could be levied on two to four residential classes of system users. The SWAB was not able to provide a single recommendation from among these bridge financing mechanisms, but it does urge the Board and Manager to use at least one or some combination of funding options to provide adequate solid waste program funding until a permanent, stable funding source can be put in place. In its deliberations over solid waste financing, the SWAB received considerable technical assistance in development of financial models from UNC's Environmental Finance Center, especially Jeff Hughes and Joe Cook. A presentation by Prince William County's Solid Waste Director Tom Smith informed the SWAB about this innovative model. The Orange County Solid Waste staff provided additional information about the solid waste budget and the waste reduction plan that also helped the SWAB in its deliberations. Finally, the SWAB was also able to draw on the work done by the Alternate Finance Committee during the tenure of the Landfill Owners Group through 1999. --end executive summary --