Exclusive: Gold Coast ratepayers after June budget will pay waste gate fees

Tip fees will be introduced by the Gold Coast City Council after a backflip by councillors following a behind closed doors special budget meeting. FULL STORY AND PRICING

Tip fees will be introduced by the Gold Coast City Council after councillors backflipped in a behind closed doors special budget meeting.

Most councillors backed the move, recommended by City officers, who say a user pays system is fairer than increasing a general waste charge for all ratepayers.

The gate fee will be $5 and is only going to require a final tick off by a majority of councillors when they sign off on the City Budget on June 6.

Brisbane City charges $17.40 for general waste and $14.60 for green waste. Tip gate fees at the Sunshine Coast and Ipswich City range from $15 to $18.

The only details publicly available show the item was moved by Mayor Tom Tate and seconded by hinterland-based councillor Glenn Tozer.

It shows “the recommended price path - Option 1 be included in the 2025-26 budget adoption”.

Gold Coast City councillors discussing rubbish tip gate fees behind closed doors at special budget meetings.

“That item talked about the State’s waste levy and how we (as a council) recover costs. It was part of budget deliberations,” a council source said.

“There will be a $5 gate fee on general waste. It’s on household waste, not recycling. The green waste will still be free.

“We needed to keep it (the fee) low enough to maintain volumes. The less going to the tip, the less pay the fee, the less council can pay that (State) charge. There’s this dance we have to do which is the market’s willingness to pay, not to lose that volume.”

Councillors have typically resisted gate fees for years fearing backlash - the current crop felt if the fee was too high it could lead to illegal dumping.

Voting records show councillors against it were Naomi Fowler, Donna Gates, Brooke Patterson, Joe Wilkinson, Dan Doran, Nick Marshall and Josh Martin.

City planning chair Mark Hammel and waste committee chair Shelley Curtis have been outspoken in support of officer financial reforms on waste to meet costs.

It is understood Mayor Tom Tate supports user pays seeing it as more fair than ratepayers who rarely visit the tip being slugged with a general charge.

Hinterland councillor Glenn Tozer — supports a fairer system of user pay fees.

Mr Tozer, asked why he seconded it, said it was in the public domain councillors discussed waste services at a special budget meeting.

He could not comment on the closed session but said of his “personal view” on how the City meets its State obligation in relation to their waste levy: “We’ll either have to introduce gate fees or we need to put the waste utility charge up by an equivalent amount to meet those obligations to the State.

“Like most Gold Coasters they have told us in previous surveys they prefer a user pay systems. To me that means a small fee on the gate when you go to a waste transfer station - that means every ratepayer would pay fractionally less than what they would without that gate fee.”

The most recent City report on a potential future site for the Merrimac green pad mentioned cost factors not scoped yet including “toll booth positions”.

There was a long line of cars at the entrance of Molendinar Waste and Recycling Centre. Picture by Richard Gosling.

EVERYTHING RATEPAYERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FUTURE WASTE COSTS:

* The Coast has been warned landfill life could be 10 years. There are no new sites.

* The waste recycling network services about one million customers annually.

* The cost of shipping waste out of the city could reach $3.6bn across three decades

* Another cost factor has been the State Government introducing the waste levy in 2019 but until now has been offset by the City being paid $101.8m in costs for disposing of waste.

* But those subsidies are reducing, and Government landfill levy of at least $145 a tonne, based on 2027-28 rates, would officers warn impose “significant financial burdens on ratepayers” without reducing waste to land.

* 57 per cent of ratepayers in a survey say they only want to pay for the waste they create.

Follow @PaulWestonGC 

 

Originally published as Exclusive: Gold Coast ratepayers after June budget will pay waste gate fees