Voters in Michigan county will decide fate of recycling services

The Delta County Landfill in that Michigan county has placed a millage request on the August 2016 ballot to determine the fate of the recycling, composting and household hazardous waste collection programs there.

The request for 0.3 mills on taxed property over a 10-year span is on the Tuesday, Aug. 2, election ballot. At that rate, a person who owns a $100,000 house “could expect to pay about $15 more a year in taxes,” according to an online report on the UPMatters website.

The county’s landfill manager, quoted by UPMatters, says the additional funding is necessary as a result of secondary commodity prices dropping and collection costs increasing.

Landfill Manager Don Pyle tells the news organization, “Because the markets are so low we are asking that we get this help. [Later], if pricing does turn around, maybe in the years to come we can actually expand and improve what we’re doing here.”

Delta County, located on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has a population of about 37,000 people, with around one-third of them living in the county seat of Escanaba.