City residents will pay a solid waste fee for trash and recycling pickup when the Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority starts paying for the city’s waste management contract.
The MUA approved a new fee of $1.92 per 100 cubic feet of water to fund the city’s $15.1 million garbage and recycling contract with Elizabeth-based Regional Industries. Although the fee will cover solid waste pickup, it will be assessed based on residents’ water usage.
It’s unclear if the current five-year contract has already been assigned to the MUA or when residents would begin paying the fee. According to a resolution from the MUA’s Board of Commissioners meeting in September, the solid waste fee would go into effect Jan. 1, 2021 “should the City decide to assign to JCMUA its contract with Regional Industries, Inc.”
But a JCMUA study released the same month says that the MUA “is initiating a solid waste collection service municipal utility” that “has accepted assignment, effective January 1, 2021, of the solid waste collection contract.”
Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione did not respond to multiple questions asking if the MUA had taken over the contract from the city, but said in an email that the MUA would “carry the solid waste expenses for the city.”
A transfer of the Regional Industries contract had been in the works since before the COVID-19 pandemic. At the MUA’s February meeting, Executive Director Jose Cunha noted that “coordination of JCMUA’s takeover of solid waste contracts currently held by Jersey City is ongoing,” according to the meeting minutes.
Cunha could not be reached for comment for this story. Board of Commissioners Chair Maureen Hulings referred questions to Wallace-Scalcione.
Garbage and recycling services are typically a line item in the municipal budget, funded in part by property taxes.
The city spokeswoman added that the solid waste fee that was approved in September is expected to increase nearly 30% to $2.48 per 100 cubic feet. Although a timeline for the future rate hike was not provided, Wallace-Scalcione said the average Jersey City household would pay 81 cents a day or $295.65 a year under the amended rate.
Wallace-Scalcione said the new fee structure creates “more fairness for our residents.”
“Previously, buildings with tax abatements didn’t participate in the added annual costs for solid waste collection that regular non tax abated buildings pay every year, but now this cost will be balanced more fairly with every building paying their fair share,” she said.
The JCMUA has made a number of significant financial moves over the past months. In July, citing the city’s “financial difficulty,” the MUA voted to pay an $11 million advance franchise payment to the city.
In September, the MUA also approved a 9% hike to residents’ water and sewer rates. A month later, the agency approved a collective bargaining agreement that gave 85 union employees five-year, $1.25-an-hour salary increases.
The rate hikes were the product of the MUA’s annual rate assessment, Wallace-Scalcione said, which is done “to meet higher operational costs due to inflation and debt service based on the upgrades we are doing citywide to improve functionality and eliminate flooding.”
The salary increases are “in line with inflation” and the $11 million payment was made “to help offset historic deficits incurred so that we wouldn’t have a major tax increase on residents,” she said.
But those moves have drawn criticism. In November, Jersey City Councilman-at-large Rolando Lavarro, a frequent critic of the Fulop administration, called for an investigation of what he called “dubious financial decisions” at the utility provider. In a texted statement Thursday, Lavarro called the new solid waste fee “a back door tax” imposed with “diversion and sleight of hand.”
“This is all just a shell game,” Lavarro said. “It’s the ‘short con’ being played on Jersey City’s hard working families struggling in the most difficult economic time in our nation’s history.”