Column: How is the county’s solid waste department funded?
By Amanda Haffele
It’s budget season. Numbers, dollars, projections, maintenance needs, and funding have taken over my brain waves of late.
Portage County Solid Waste differs from most other county programs as our program does not rely on tax dollars to operate. This is because our program is set up and managed within an enterprise fund. Simply put, this means that our program is run like any other business.
All debits and credits must be factored into our annual budget, so if we do not generate revenue, we cannot spend money to improve our programs and the recycling opportunities they present for residents.
Our program’s funding comes from four main sources.
The first source of revenue is from user fees. Fees are paid to dispose of or properly recycle items such as furniture, tires, televisions, mattresses, etc., and material weighed over the scale at our Transfer Facility. The per-ton fee paid to dispose of trash, as well as a few materials, will increase beginning January 1, 2025, while others will remain the same. With that being said, there are a few programs that Portage County Solid Waste does subsidize, such as the residential sharps disposal program, holiday light recycling, and the proper disposal of antifreeze and used oil.
Secondly, the program receives a small amount of revenue from the sale of materials such as scrap metals, lead-acid batteries, and, when markets are good, used oil. This also includes a meager revenue share from our processor for the county’s curbside-collected recyclables for various types of plastics, aluminum cans, steel cans, paper, cardboard, glass, etc.
Generally, this is reflected in our invoices from the processor as an offset to the processing fees. Recycling markets go up and down just like the stock market. Recycling markets this year have been low; therefore, we haven’t received as much of an offset as projected. This, in turn, drives up the cost of processing recyclables.
A third source of revenue comes from grants that the Department receives annually. These grants include a Clean Sweep Grant from the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP) for the annual Household Hazardous Waste Collection Program and a Recycling Grant from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR).
The grants distributed by DATCP and WDNR are not supported or funded with any property tax, sales tax, or any other Wisconsin taxes. Instead, the funding for these grants comes from fees that are paid to landfills to dispose of trash (tipping fees). Anyone (in and out of state) that disposes of trash in a Wisconsin landfill pays $7 a ton, which is included in the tipping fee, to help fund recycling and hazardous waste-related activities in our state.
DATCP and WDNR oversee the distribution of these funds through a grant issuing and reporting process. A percentage of this money goes to programs like ours to help offset recycling costs, a small portion goes towards employees of WDNR, and the largest portion offsets other environmental programs in the state.
The fourth source of revenue is the per capita fees paid by municipalities to participate in our recycling program. The per capita fees are then billed to the participating municipalities, and each municipality adjusts its budget accordingly. Some municipalities bill each residence a separate fee, usually when the property tax statements are mailed each December.
Other municipalities include per capita fees in their normal operating budget, which is used to set the levy for that particular municipality, and some collect it through a line item on their utility bills.
In good years, we’re able to put money into the Department’s reserves for future capital expenses and unexpected costs or needs. In rough years, we will use some of those funds to help offset our costs.
As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns you may have.
Amanda Haffele is the Portage County Solid Waste Director. She works at the Material Recovery Facility, 600 Moore Rd., Plover, and can be reached at 715.343.6297 or [email protected].