(Spirit Lake)– The annual practice of giving away free green garbage bags in Spirit Lake is about to come to an end.
The city council Tuesday approved a Sanitation Committee recommendation to end the annual free distribution of garbage bags. The final give-away will be in June. Councilman Clyde Ihrke is a member of the city’s Sanitation Committee. He says the committee made the recommendation as a way to help increase revenues in the Sanitation Department’s budget. He says the one free roll of bags wasn’t enough for many residents to get them through an entire year and they’d wind up buying additional bags anyway.
Ihrke adds the additional revenue would be used to help defray the cost of purchasing biodegradable bags for leaf and yard waste pickup…an additional Sanitation Department recommendation that was also approved Tuesday by the city council. The new bags will cost 50 cents each. Ihrke says they’ll save city employees a considerable amount of time. In the past, they had to cut open the bags and dump them out since the non-biodegradable plastic couldn’t be left in the compost pile.
Another Sanitation Department recommendation was to hire two more employees to assist with garbage pick up. The city council opted instead Tuesday to hire just one additional employee for now and to re-evaluate the situation after three months. Ihrke says the city in the past has had to pull people from the Street Department to help with garbage pick up. He says the huge growth in the city is resulting in more and more work for the Sanitation Department. Ihrke says there are 500 to 600 new homes in the area along with 40 to 50 new businesses, and all of them need garbage picked up.
The vote to end the free garbage bag distribution wasn’t unanimous. Councilman Jerry Harbst cast the lone no vote. The other Sanitation Department recommendations were approved unanimously.
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