Fillmore City officials plan to reach out to county commissioners with a plan to generate more revenue from the city’s construction waste landfill, which is in danger of closure.
City council members passed an item last week seeking to include a new one-time fee to city building permits in order to generate new revenue and support continued operations at the site.
Council member Kyle Monroe, who oversees the landfill on behalf of the city, has led the charge the last few years in ironing out differences between the county and city—the county technically owns and operates the landfill, but Fillmore residents as well as those in neighboring communities frequently use it.
The hangup between county and city has included a lack of record-keeping and specific revenue tracking, making it increasingly difficult for the county to justify landfill services without Fillmore City paying more for operations there.
Monroe said there simply is no more revenue to give to the county in order to keep the landfill open without implementing a new fee.
“The building permit thing is simply an effort to generate some more money without raising taxes on the rest of the community,” he said.
Monroe said a pricing schedule would be created likely based on square footage of any new construction— with separate schedules for residential and commercial construction.
As an example, he said construction of an 1,800 square foot home might generate up to three 40-yard containers worth of waste. A one-time charge for something like that would fall into the $400 or $500 range, he surmised.
“That’s covering the whole build of that home. There’s going to be some error in there because you just don’t know. All we can do is put the best guess on that that we can formulate,” he said. “The economics of it is simply that right now Fillmore City goes broke every month in our garbage collection fee. Because of what we pay Millard County for the landfill fees, and the rest of the money goes to cover the contract to Holt Waste.”
Monroe said he advocated for creating a new fund that would allow the city to track the revenue generated by any new fees. He also advocated a fee structure similar to one already in place at the county’s main landfill outside Delta. Since residents in surrounding towns also use the Fillmore facility, he said he was in favor of reaching out to those communities and urging them to also adopt a new building permit fee.
Holden is the only community on the Eastside with its own landfill, a construction debris facility like Fillmore’s.
“Our intention here is not to close the landfill. We’re trying to do everything we possibly can to get all parties on board with it to keep it going,” Mayor Mike Holt said.
Residents who attended the meeting shared various comments, including urging county, city and nearby town officials to conduct a public meeting and hammer out their differences.
“If we showed up at the landfill and there was a sign that said ‘it’s closed, go to Delta,’ there’s going to be a lot of very unhappy people,” one resident said.
He added that the lack of communication between the city and county over the issue was bad enough that maybe people should resort to dumping trash in front of local officials’ homes until everyone can get on the same page and communicate better.
A few other comments followed a similar track.
One resident encouraged the city to hold a public hearing but said there would likely be some complaints about the new fee.
Mayor Holt said he and Monroe have been dealing with complaints for the past 10 months, at the county and city level.
“We don’t know what complaints are going to be worse, implementing a fee on building permits or having a closure of the landfill,” Monroe said.
Residents in attendance generally agreed closing the landfill would set off a backlash.
Monroe, who said he’s been working on the issue for about three years, finally made a motion to work with county officials to implement the new building permit fee and new fee structure for residential and commercial construction projects. Winget seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.
A letter to county commissioners outlining the effort was approved. Officials said because two new commissioners will soon be seated, the effort should be expedited, they argued.
In other construction related new in Fillmore, the city narrowly adopted a resolution allowing builders to use PVC piping for culinary water projects.
Mayor Holt cast a tie-breaking vote on the item—his first since taking office.
According to a presentation a few weeks ago by Councilman Dennis Alldredge, Fillmore City is the only community in western Utah to not allow PVC infrastructure in water and sewer projects.
Devan Shields, a civil engineer with Sunrise Engineering, said his firm recommended the city not pass the resolution. He said he felt like PVC offered the city a lower value proposition on its projects. However, he also agreed the city would more and more come up against developers who wish to use the product.
