Island County Takes Big Step Toward Rescinding Recently Approved Recycling Ordinance

At the Feb 6 Commissioners workshop meeting Commissioners Kelly Emerson and Jill Johnson teamed to direct Bill Oakes, Director of Island County Public Works, to prepare an ordinance to rescind the recently approved Recycling Ordinance

The original ordinance was approved by Commissioner Price-Johnson and Commissioner Homola in one of her final actions as Commissioner

Newly elected Commissioner Jill Johnson brought a refreshing change in fiscal management to the board, and in one of her first meetings she called the December vote a “legacy decision”  by her predecessor and questioned its priority over other existing needs, such as a discussion at the county courthouse that’s going on simultaneously about a possible law-and-justice tax.

Commissioner Price-Johnson was not happy with this plan to rescind… She even refused Commissioner Emerson’s request to allow another involved firm to make comments at their workshop

For the total truth about this discussion, listen to the it at this link: http://www.islandcounty.net/commissioners/worksessions/2013/

HPJ was obviously unable to accept her minority position in the voting  on this  subject without her puppet, ex-Commissioner Homoa who  almost always voted with her

All that’s required is to rescind the faulty recycling ordinance is that the commissioners hold a public hearing and vote to repeal the new ordinance.

One disgruntled citizen who disagreed with the recycling ordinance passed in December listed the following concerns which were echoed by many other frustrated Citizens:

“The presentation made to the commissioners was so lacking in hard numbers it wouldn’t have secured a high-interest loan at a used car lot.

How many route miles/gallons of fuel burned to collect how many tons of material? A real environmentalist would have learned the answer to that question before making the proposal.

Do the people who will be affected by the proposal want it? Since the proposed plan didn’t indicate how many customers Island Disposal has (they guessed), I’m sure most of those same customers do not know that “service level ordinance” means “we just passed a law that forces you to pay for a service you may not want in order to keep one you do want.”

Once Director Oaks provides the requested rescinding ordinance to the Commissioners, the next step will then be to schedule Public hearings for rescinding of this controversial plan that has several problems that would make it unmanageable and unfair to many property owners and tax payers

After the public hearings the Commissioners will finalize the ordinance and will vote to rescind