Solid waste, Mozingo study on agenda for council

The Maryville City Council is expected to move closer to a solution designed to end deficit spending required to subsidize the municipal solid waste transfer station when it meets at 7 o’clock this evening at City Hall.

City Manager Greg McDanel will present a report outlining four alternatives for the station, which is supposed to be self-supporting, but which has lost around $100,000 a year since Porter Trash LLC opened a competing facility east of town in April 2012.

Choices before the council include closing the station; leasing it to a third party; municipalization of city trash service, which would likely mean contracting with a single garbage hauler who would agree to use the municipal station; or passage of a flow-control ordinance that would require all haulers operating inside Maryville to dump refuse at the city facility.

The transfer station question is listed on the council agenda as a discussion item only, and no ordinances enabling any of the above alternatives have been proposed.

However, it is conceivable that the council could go ahead and vote on a general course of action.

Should the council decide to close the station, Dennis Porter, who owns Porter Trash, has offered to lock in rates until 2020 that would allow the city to dump street sweepings at his Highway 136 facility for $5 above cost.

Porter has also said he will accept debris from city-demolished unsafe structures for $10 above cost and leave existing rates in place until 2020 for Maryville’s half-dozen or so private haulers.

The city is currently under contract with Kansas City, Kansas-based Deffenbaugh Industries, the largest privately held trash collection and disposal company in the region, for the hauling of solid waste from its transfer station to approved landfills.

That contract expires August 12, 2016, and requires the city to pay hauling charges on 20 tons of refuse a day regardless of actual volume. McDanel stated in his written report that it would be impractical to close the transfer station before that date.

In other business tonight, the council is to consider approval of a contract with Economic Modeling Specialists International for an economic impact study of Mozingo Lake Recreation Park.

According to municipal staff, the purpose of the study, which would cost between $35,000 and $40,000, is to measure new economic activity directly attributable to the presence of the 1,000-acre lake and surrounding park and to highlight “the broader functional impacts of Mozingo on the community at large.”

A third major decision for the council this week involves a series of ordinances related to proposed replacement of the deteriorating runway and taxiway at Northwest Missouri Regional Airport.

As currently designed, the project would also include replacement of a taxiway turnaround, taxiway edge lights, runway edge lights and a wind cone.

Total project cost, based on a $3 million low bid from Idecker Co., which would serve as the general contractor, is $3.3 million, more than 90 percent of which is being provided through a Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program grant.

The city will be responsible for a $338,000 local match, which is being financed using a Missouri Department of Transportation Statewide Transportation Assistance Revolving Fund loan — a program known as STAR.

Authorized by the Missouri General Assembly, STAR was created specifically to provide low-interest loans to local governments for non-highway projects such as railroads, waterways and air travel infrastructure.

Maryville’s loan is to be paid back over ten years at an interest rate of just under 2 percent.

In other business tonight, the council is expected to set new real estate and personal property tax rates for 2016.

Property taxes will go up for Maryville residents next year by a little more than a dime per $100 of assessed valuation due to a voter-approved increase of the Parks & Recreation Department levy ceiling from 30 to 40 cents.

By statute, the levy increase takes into account reductions in assessed valuation, a formula that has resulted in a slightly higher than estimated Parks & Recreation rate of $0.4036.

In addition to Parks & Rec, city property taxes provide revenue for the General Fund, Maryville Public Library and municipal debt service.

The combined fiscal 2015 rate was $0.9332 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, and the fiscal 2016 rate is $1.0347.