SDRC will push ahead with reduced hours to waste facilities across the region

The council will trial cost-cutting measures after it revealed it was losing $4m each year to waste management.

Southern Downs residents are not convinced this is the right way forward.

Southern Downs Regional Council is pushing ahead with a controversial trial of reduced hours at the region’s waste transfer stations.

A motion was passed at Wednesday’s ordinary council meeting to cut the opening hours to 11 tips in the Southern Downs for a six-month period as part of the 2021-24 waste reduction and recycling plan.

Mayor Vic Pennisi said he acknowledged the backlash but said waste was ongoing expense for the council.

“The cold hard reality is we’re losing about $4m in waste on an annual basis,” he said.

“It’s a serious loss and we have to peg it back somehow.”

Mr Pennisi said a decision had been made in the 2021/22 draft budget to include a separate ‘line charge’ on rates’ notices for waste.

“It will be a separate line charge like you have for water,” he said.

“That money will be quarantined for waste and not other things.”

Deputy Mayor Ross Bartley said the council needed to be mindful that a large number of residents opposed the change.

Four-hundred-and-thirty-two Allora residents spoke out against the reduction of hours, alongside about 130 people from The Summit and Killarney.

“We have 20,000 ratepayers in the region and … the reduction in hours would save $380,000” Cr Bartley said.

“If you had 20,000 rate notices and you put them up $20, you’d cover that.”

Cr Bartley said he believed people felt strongly enough about having access to waste transfer stations that they would pay the extra cost.

He also said he thought there would be increased demand on waste facilities and questioned if the council was making it harder to access a “necessary” service.

Fellow councillor Andrew Gale said significant research had gone into the plan.

“We have to be responsible, we have to provide a service, and we have to balance a budget,” he said.

Cr Gale said the plan also included the expansion of wheelie bin services.

The Mayor said the cut to waste services was a serious saving, and in six months the council would have to decide if the extra cash was worth it.

The shortened hours would commence from July 1, with the council engaging with the community again in six months.