DUBOIS – Pricing discussions between City of DuBois officials and Waste Management representatives heated up at Monday night’s council meeting.
At the bi-weekly meeting, Waste Management representatives Ed Yahner and Ralph Zoerner proposed their case for raising their commercial service rates within city limits. They presented a seven percent increase to help cover operation costs.
The representatives stated that fuel costs have gone up 322 percent in the past four years and recycling up 300 percent.
While the representatives did say that they are not the cheapest option, they believed that they are growing the local economy, providing jobs and careers for the area.
DuBois Mayor Patrick Reasinger was troubled with this ask, as prices have been growing significantly over the years. He told the representatives that in 2018 prices were $130.94 dollars for dumpster service, in 2022 the price jumped to $170 dollars.
The representatives told the mayor that prices only went up by 8.5 percent, so both parties are unsure where the extra funds are going.
In the end, the Mayor asked to see the Waste Management’s financial statements since 2018 in an effort to prove that costs are increasing.
Other items of note from the meeting are below:
The City Council voted to hire Keystone Core Services to do a property survey of part of the City using a scoring system to determine, and rank, how blighted and in-compliance a property is with DuBois ordinances. This will provide the City with an objective ranking of each property. Being done by a third party, Arbaugh stated he hoped this would avoid any claims of favoritism. For the residents, KCS will provide the properties with suggestions on how to fix the issues and ways to get funding for those fixes. The inspection form, provided to the media, lists what KCS will be looking at. It includes things such as visible rubbish, the condition of the sidewalks, excessive weeds, evidence of rodents, signs of cracks in the structure, and inoperable vehicles.
The City Council voted to put out bids for another timber sale. The amount of timber to be sold for regeneration efforts will be about half of what was originally planned. City/Township Manager Shawn Arbaugh announced that an agreement between the Pennsylvania Game Commission and The City of DuBois on swapping land has been reached. The City will be receiving 170 acres of land north of Doolittle’s near I-80. In exchange, the Game Commission will be receiving 204 acres of land in “Compartment 1” and out on the watershed. This includes land that the timber sale will be occurring on. Councilmember Jim Aughenbaugh stated that this was in negotiations for years. When negotiations started the Game Commission wanted five acres of land for every acre the City would receive. He was happy to see the swap was negotiated down to almost 1 acres for 1 acre. Arbaugh states that this will give the Consolidated City of DuBois more opportunities for economic development near the interstates.
