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City OKs garbage rate increase

In the sometimes-murky world of refuse hauling, Sonoma has managed to retain what is increasingly becoming a municipal anomaly – a local garbage company.

Sonoma Garbage Company (SGC), owned by the Curotto family, remains an independent, locally-owned refuse hauler with rates for both residential and commercial hauling that are among the cheapest in the county.

But during the Jan. 18 Sonoma City Council meeting, it became clear that even the Curottos are not immune to rate-increase anxiety, a condition that broke out among council members during consideration of proposed rate increases for both residential and commercial customers.

Refuse hauling rate increases in Sonoma are based in part on a fixed formula called the Refuse Rate Index (RRI), which factors together six cost categories, including labor, fuel, vehicle replacement, maintenance, tipping fees and miscellaneous other costs.

For 2012, SGC requested a RRI increase of 2.2 percent for residential and commercial garbage. But that’s only part of the rate structure.

Some of SGC’s garbage volume is temporarily being hauled to a disposal site in Napa because tipping fees (the rate charged for dumping garbage) there are cheaper than in Sonoma County. The savings allowed SGC to replenish its vehicle replacement fund, which took a hit following purchase of a much-needed new garbage truck.

SGC plans to resume hauling most of its waste material to the Sonoma County landfill in 2013, creating a 4.68 percent increase in disposal costs. A portion of those cost increases, amounting to 2.34 percent, will be allocated to the 2012 hauling rates.

Additionally, SCG has initiated a new commercial food waste composting service, following a free trial run last year, and the cost of the commercial composting pick-up has been calculated as a rate increase of 3.01 percent on commercial customers only.

These rate figures would result in an overall residential rate increase of 4.54 percent and a commercial rate increase of 7.55 percent.

It was the latter figure that caused some collective anxiety among council members, two of whom announced they would not support the rate increase until a study was conducted to determine the impact of amortizing the commercial composting service over all ratepayers, not just commercial restaurants.

Councilmember Tom Rouse asked SGC representatives, “Why not spread the food scrap cost over the entire rate base,” and Mayor Joanne Sanders objected to the rate increase because businesses not generating food scraps would still be charged for the composting program. She said she couldn’t support the rate increase until she could see the “impact of amortization of food waste cost over residential ratepayers as well.”

But SGC representative Ken Wells, a former executive director of Sonoma County Waste Management Agency, told the council that food waste can’t be effectively segregated and weighed to equitably distribute the cost, and that residential ratepayers are already paying for the composting of yard waste and non-animal kitchen scraps.

In the end, Rouse and Sanders were reassured and joined the council majority to unanimously approve the rate increase, which was made retroactively effective to Jan. 1.

Observed Councilmember Steve Barbose, “Even with the rate increase, Sonoma is the cheapest (garbage service) in the county, except for Rohnert Park (which calculates its rates differently). We are so lucky to have our own hauler (and) their efforts to keep their rates down.”