Goya Dmytryshchak
Four Hobsons Bay councillors who voted to restore weekly garbage collection doubled down on their position at an emergency meeting they called on Thursday.
The meeting was called in response to a notice of rescission, or bid to overturn a June 29 decision to restore the weekly collection.
The move to rescind was made by Mayor Jonathon Marsden and councillors Peter Hemphill and Pamela Sutton-Legaud.
Deputy mayor Daria Kellander and councillors Tony Briffa, Diana Grima and Matt Tyler on June 29 had voted to restore the weekly rubbish collection, cut the green bin collection from weekly to fortnightly and trial compostable paper bags for food organics and garden organics (FOGO) bins.
The bid to overturn the decision was lost by 4-3 votes.
The first 45 minutes of Thursday’s meeting were spent arguing about why the emergency meeting was called that night instead of being scheduled for the next ordinary council meeting next Tuesday.
Cr Hemphill told the meeting that “public transparency has gone by the wayside by holding a meeting like this”, his comment drawing angry interjections from other councillors of being “vexatious, offensive and absurd”.
“The main point I am making is that the difference between this meeting and the normal meeting that would be held is that no petitions can be tabled, no questions from the public in advance, no questions from the public from the floor on the night,” Cr Hemphill said.
A petition by Better West calling on the council to overturn the decision to reinstate weekly garbage collection and reduce the FOGO collection to fortnightly could not be tabled at the emergency meeting. It had gained more than 1600 signatures in two days.
Cr Peter Hemphill asked the meeting how much extra cost would be incurred by a weekly garbage and weekly FOGO service.
Strategy, economy and sustainability manager Katy McMahon replied there would be “an additional operating cost of $1.59 million and $110,000 capital cost, which equates to approximately $40 per household”.
“This is for this new financial year, which would then increase with increasing landfill costs in the 2022-23 financial year of an operating cost of $1.63 million to the following financial year.”
Cr Kellander told the meeting this figure was “misleading”.
Documents made public before the June 29 meeting state that revising FOGO to fortnightly collection and introducing weekly garbage collection would cost $540,000 in operating costs and $300,000 in capital cost or $14 per household.
Cr Matt Tyler told the meeting that since the garbage collection was changed from weekly to fortnightly in October 2019, “we’ve seen a doubling in the number of truckloads of recycling that are going straight to landfill.”
“While I encourage each household to take responsibility for limiting their waste, and education certainly plays a part in reducing contamination, we won’t make progress by failing to meet the needs of at least 40 per cent of households,” he said.
