OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — Oktibbeha supervisors voted unanimously Monday to bill property owners instead of tenants for house-to-house garbage collection services, and they also voted to request a full list of addresses in the county that will be billed starting January 1.
The supervisors previously debated billing methods for garbage collection services in the board’s October and November meetings. Currently, Golden Triangle Waste Services charges the county $62,000, or $8.12 per house. Starting Jan. 1, GTWS will charge upward of an additional $14,600 per month to account for 1,800 more residences in the county. Any residence with water and electricity in the county generates a garbage bill.
The board’s decision to bill property owners should address the problem of renters not paying their garbage bills, District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said.
“The county’s offering the service and picking up the garbage, but we’re asking everybody to do their part, because if you don’t, we’re going to have to raise garbage bill fees to cover this cost,” he said. “But if everybody would pay their garbage bill, we won’t even have to consider that.”
GTWS formed in 1997 to provide garbage pickup for Oktibbeha, Lowndes and Webster counties, and supervisors from the three counties serve on the GTWS board. Howard and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams represent Oktibbeha County on the board, which will meet Thursday and vote to authorize the billing of additional residences.
The responsibility of picking up garbage cans has fallen to the supervisors, who previously considered splitting from GTWS but decided to stick with it. District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery said he continues to have misgivings about the county’s participation in GTWS, since its contract includes picking up and delivering garbage cans and replacing and fixing broken ones.
“If we as county supervisors don’t go out and fix these cans, they’ll never get fixed, so I would appreciate the organization that we contract out our garbage pickup to maintain, replace and fix these garbage cans,” Montgomery said.
Public input
The board decided in November to hold a public hearing at Monday’s meeting to allow county residents to bring forward any concerns about garbage billing and to mail out notices to property owners to inform them of the potential change of billing from renter to property owners. Some residents still said they felt they were not adequately informed.
Cayla Clayton, the executive manager for Chesteen Properties, said she felt “backed up into a corner,” since Chesteen will now be billed for 77 properties, and most of the tenants live in subsidized housing.
“As far as the notice getting to me and the way I thought it read, I’m supposed to give enough notice to these folks, and I felt like I was not given enough notice or enough instruction,” Clayton said.
County administrator Emily Garrard said trying to get renters to pay garbage bills has been “quite a headache for the county,” and county wastewater district employee Dwight Price said the county should have been using deed records to determine who is responsible for the properties where those renters live.
A few people said they have family members living in separate structures on their property, and Garrard said they will not have to pay the entire bill at once in that case. Property owners who have second homes in Oktibbeha County and live elsewhere will still have to pay their garbage bills if the residence has water and electricity, Garrard said.
The board agreed with District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller’s suggestion to ask GTWS for a full list of all the addresses that will be billed for garbage collection in order to notify all property owners before Jan. 1. The switch from billing renters to owners should keep the latter informed about what they owe, board attorney Rob Roberson said.
“A lot of times, these property owners are not even aware that the bill’s not being paid until it’s gotten well overdue,” he said. “This will at least give them an opportunity to stay on top of this a lot better than they were before.”
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