Budget approved for the Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority.
Essex County Council has approved a 4.1-per-cent hike in the cost to Essex County municipalities to fund the Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority (EWSWA) in 2023.
Essex County municipalities and the City of Windsor will be assessed $14.4 million in fixed costs based on their populations, an increase of 4.1 percent over 2022.
Michelle Bishop, General Manager of the EWSWA, says the budget includes an increase of $260,000 to the County of Essex and approximately $305,000 to the City of Windsor.
EWSWA's fee for waste delivered is also being increased by a dollar to $41 per tonne.
Bishop says it's expected that both the city and county will deliver more waste in 2023.
"We have been seeing high trends in 2020 and 2021, a little bit smaller this year. So we're expecting about an extra thousand tonnes over the 2022 budget amount. Looking to bring the municipal waste tonnes from about 111,000 tonnes to 112,000 to 2023," she says.
Bishop says most municipalities are seeing increasing inflationary pressures.
"About 51 per cent of our expenditures are contracted services and those contracts do have provisions for Consumer Price Index increases and fuel increases," she adds.
The EWSWA's 2023 budget anticipates just over $35 million in expenditures and $17 million in fees from institutional, commercial and industrial users of the regional landfill, recycling sales, blue box funding, and other sources of revenue.
A $3.8-million shortfall in revenues is to be covered by the authority's rate stabilization fund.
The EWSWA's budget still needs to be approved by Windsor City Council, which will be addressed during city budget deliberations in April.