The City of Nanaimo will borrow up to $6.2 million to pay for its new automated garbage collection system.

City politicians agreed at a council meeting Monday to use short-term borrowing to finance six trucks and 72,000 wheeled carts needed as Nanaimo shifts to an automated garbage system.

Central Nanaimo residents are expected to see the new service this October, while the rest of the city will get automated pickup and a trio of carts for garbage, recycling and organics next year. To date, the investment is expected to be $8 million, with another $150,000 budgeted for public awareness, according to the City of Nanaimo. Carts alone are $4.5 million.

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The municipality will borrow up to $6.2 million over a five-year term to pay for the service, along with dollars from the city’s equipment replacement reserve and a grant from Fortis B.C. for CNG trucks.

Coun. Diane Brennan supported borrowing in a finance and audit committee meeting last week and again on Monday.

She told the News Bulletin she’s always indicated she was in favour of the new garbage collection because of the money in saves the city, in that it doesn’t have to contract out recycling and the trucks create a safer work environment for employees.

“[On Thursday] it was just to confirm the method of payment, so it wasn’t really up for discussion really about whether we were going to proceed with this,” she said.

Nanaimo councillors Jerry Hong and Gord Fuller were against the motion Monday. Coun. Jim Kipp was absent, but voted against a recommendation to borrow at the finance and audit committee meeting.

Fuller said he gets “the safety thing” but when there are trucks that don’t work, he said new ones are purchased.

“Two million for vehicles, $4.5 million for bins; this is outrageous, the costs. It just astounds me,” he said.

Hong said he supports automation, as he did when he voted to buy the first two trucks, but he thought it was going to be phased in. He doesn’t favour going all in at once, the amount of borrowing and the decision on recycling or yard waste – both of which the city will handle.

The city’s recycling contract has been with Waste Connections of Canada, which owns a material recovery facility that Nanaimo would continue to use. In an earlier interview, Hong said his biggest worry is if the company, five years from now, says it’s not viable to be in Nanaimo and closes the facility down, pointing out that if the city has to then go to Parksville or Ladysmith there would be wear and tear on the trucks. There are unanswered questions, he said.

“We shouldn’t be in the garbage business to begin with,” he said. “I think we should have relocated the eight union staff to parks and rec or to public works and contracted all of garbage out. It’s something we shouldn’t be involved in if it has that high of a rate for injury.”

Deborah Duncan, the city’s deputy director of financial services, said as the city gets final costs in for trucks and bins and disposal of existing units, there may be marginal changes in what has to be borrowed or in the user rates. Automation is paid for through user rates, which went up to $118 in July and are expected to go to $169 next year.

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