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| Possible Trash Vote in Abingdon Next Year |
An proposal that's become hotly contested in Abingdon could ultimately be decided at the ballot box.
The proposal is city-wide trash collection, which the Abingdon City Council had planned to open for bids but instead, during Monday night's meeting, opted for two town hall informational meetings before potentially turning the issue over to the voters through a referendum in April.
Abingdon Mayor Steve Darmer tells WGIL the dates for the town hall meetings have not yet been established. "According to our attorney (Jack Ball), he thought it would be best until later in the year, closer to April, before we did the town hall meetings, so everything was fresh. We'll probably do them towards the end of the year," Darmer said.
The mayor says officials began looking into city-wide waste pick-up as a way to reduce the number of properties that have trash piling up. Darmer tells WGIL the service is working in many other communities that were dealing with the same issue. "They really had solved...95-percent of their problem of trash in yards," Darmer said. "Once they had (trash pickup), it's on their water bill and they're paying for it -- they use it."
Darmer says that was one of the solutions city officials were looking at instead of spending thousands of dollars ticketing people and taking them to court. But there's a vocal opposition against a city-wide trash collection, including Lloyd and Joanne Yoho, who own Abingdon Salvage, from which many residents contract their waste removal.
Darmer says the information in the town hall meetings will include the services that would be offered and the cost associated with a city-wide trash removal program. He says it's possible the issue could be worked out before getting to the referendum stage. |
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| 09 16 08 by Newsroom |
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