College Station City Council members continued discussions for their Fiscal Year 22-2023 budget Thursday and approved the Brazos Valley Solid Waste Management Agency budget, which will reduce the gate rate for the cities of College Station and Bryan from $13 to $12 per ton.
Bryan Griesbach, executive director of BVSMA, told the council during their regular meeting that the Twin Oaks Landfill is their main asset.
“We take about 1,700 tons per day at that facility. It is open to open market, so we compete with all of the other landfills in the state of Texas,” he said. “We are paid for by our user fee through the tonnage fee that we collect at the gate. We also operate the Twin Oaks Compost Facility, and provide the Twin Oaks Household Hazardous Waste Collection Event twice a year.”
As an agency, BVSMA is audited annually, Griesbach said, and noted they have never had any problems with their audits since their inception.
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“We are also inspected on a regular basis and have never had any environmental compliance issues. We are 44% lower today or next year, at $12 a ton gate rate than what we started out with in 2011,” he told the council. “We are very happy to provide that to the cities, and compared to the $30/ton gate rate, that is an $18/ton difference. When you multiply that out by the 70,000 tons approximately that the city will bring in, that is going to be about $1.3 million in savings next year.”
He then held up a 10-pound trash bag that had $.06 written on it and said, “That is what the city pays for waste disposal at the gate. Your 10-pound bag of garbage the landfill collects six cents; compared to a third-party gate rate of about 16 cents a ton.”
Griesbach also told the council about an upcoming landfill gas project at Twin Oaks Landfill that is expected to be finished later this year.
“The landfill gas is produced by the decomposition of organic material in a landfill. We put in headers and wells down into the waste to collect the gas, currently it is going to a flare … the new project is going to make this a beneficial use,” he said. “It is going to clean that landfill gas, take out the CO2, which is the other major component, so it will inject that into an onsite natural gas transmission line that is actually already crossing our property.”
He told the council an immediate benefit for BVSMA is that Morrow Energy of Midland will take over the expansion of the landfill gas well system, a project that is already underway.
The council also held a public hearing on the FY23 budget. College Station resident Brian Alg spoke about Texas Independence Ball Park.
“I would just like to encourage you all to take a look at the budget and look at some things that you can cut. One thing that stuck out to me was Texas Independence Ball Park. There is a lot of uncertainty about Phase 2, and I think with Phase 1 we don’t even know what the costs even are,” Alg told the council. “Is this supposed to be for Little Leaguers or for people that need the big fields? We don’t know, there is a lot of confusion.”
After the public hearing, Mary Ellen Leonard, College Station’s finance director, noted the proposed budget totals $410.1 million, including $322.5 million for operations and maintenance and $87.6 million for capital projects.
Council member Linda Harvell said that she would not be in support of the proposed increase in utility bills for residents due to the tax increase.
Harvell asked City Manager Bryan Woods if a $30 increase per month in utility bills was accurate.
Woods replied: “If I remember correctly, it was $15 for an average user, and an average single-family user it is $14-something. And then we also looked at what was the average household price … and what the taxes would be next year for that household and that would be $15 a month. So, the combination of utilities and taxes would be $30 a month.”
Harvell responded: “I can’t support that. I think there are a lot of families out there and there are a lot of people on fixed income. I understand why we need to do that, but that is just too aggressive of an increase. So, I won’t be supporting that.”
The council is scheduled to adopt the FY23 budget Aug. 11 after it holds a public hearing on the proposed tax rate Aug. 3.
