Danielsville ponders garbage rates

The council agreed last month to increase garbage rates to $2 over what the city pays WastePro Sanitation for garbage pick up and agreed to the first reading of the ordinance at this month’s meeting.

However, the council is still up in the air on what amendments, if any, need to be made to their current five-year contract with WastePro and what the actual fees for garbage service may need to be.

After an hour-long discussion, the council agreed to table the contract addendum for another month and in the meantime to have council members Junne Temple and Ron Faust meet with WastePro officials to see if they can work out their differences and be ready to take action on the matter in October.

WastePro representative John Cown said his company wants to work with the city and fix any problems.

During the discussion about WastePro, it came to the council’s attention that the city is two months behind on payments for garbage services.

Assistant city clerk Becky Delay explained that the city has always held bills until there is enough money from revenues in the general account to pay those bills.

Mayor Philip Croya said it was unprofessional for the city to be behind on its bills.

In another matter, the council agreed to pay $5,000 from the city’s water and sewer fund to Peeples and Quigley engineers to participate in a county wastewater project study.

Temple told engineer Chris Quigley that she did not understand why the study costs so much. Quigley explained that it is a large study concerning a $7 million project that will take approximately four months to complete.

In other business, the council took no action on road striping of some city streets; agreed to allow the NEGRC (Northeast Georgia Regional Commission) to do digital boundary updates of the city, at no cost to the city and the council tabled a decision on whether or not to give a discounted water rate to the Madison County Master Gardeners for the community garden project. Temple said she had spoken with county commission chairman Anthony Dove about the county providing the discount to the garden and that he was to present it to the board of commissioners for a vote.

Also Sept. 7, Mayor Croya agreed to speak with police chief Rodney Christian about continuing discrepancies between traffic stops on his monthly report and the monthly report of officer Steve Gary. Gary makes consistently more stops than Christian. City clerk Connie Riley noted during last month’s meeting that Christian, as chief, also had administrative duties.