Charities, non-profits protest Toronto’s new garbage pickup fees

Toronto’s new garbage fees for charities and non-profits will take food from the mouths of homeless people and end services to others in need, city hall has heard.

More than 70 people packed a committee room to give a city solid waste manager an earful Monday at a meeting convened by Social Planning Toronto in response to a budget hike that caught many by surprise.

They ranged from small, including the Church of the Redeemer at Bloor St. W. and Avenue Rd., which serves 100 or more breakfasts and lunches daily to homeless and other marginalized people, to big — including Goodwill, which trains hard-to-employ Ontarians.

The budget that council passed in January decreed, with little notice, that pickup fees will be phased in for previously exempt agencies between this July and January 2015. Fully implemented, they will pump an extra $2.9 million a year into city coffers.

“This increase is going to cost us our program,” Peter Tovell, of the Church of the Redeemer, told Vincent Sferrazza, of the city’s solid waste department. “We’re going to radically cut our food budget or be out of the service.”

Angie Hocking, the church’s outreach program co-ordinator, said Tuesday the fees would take a $5,000 bite out of her $14,000 food budget.

The fees would cost Goodwill, which has to junk some of the furniture and other items donated for its retail stores, an unanticipated $500,000 per year, said chief executive Keiko Nakamura.

Potential effects include the need to close some of Goodwill’s 20 stores in Ontario, she said, probably sending more items to landfill instead of resale.

Sferrazza told the agencies they are on a list of 1,100 previously exempt entities, which includes for-profit daycares, an embassy and others that should rightfully pay.

The budget committee recently directed him to compile a list of affected agencies that receive non-reusable donations. In November, as part of 2013 budget deliberations, he’ll make recommendations on how to accommodate those in that “special category.”

“You should not be penalized for circumstances beyond your control,” Sferrazza told them, adding his staff can “audit” their waste and make recommendations on how to limit what goes to garbage.

Imposing lower fees for those in the special category is one possible outcome, he said in an interview Tuesday, adding that council will have the final say.

Hocking has hopes that community engagement will see the fees reduced or removed, but noted the Church of the Redeemer and others will be paying half the phased-in increase by the time council votes next January.

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: David Rider