The City of Humboldt and REACT Waste Management have come to an agreement on payment for services. The agreement concludes  several rounds of negotiations which have taken place since 2020. A report presented at the regular Monday meeting of Humboldt CIty Council recommended that the City pay $195,912 to resolve the payment disputes with the waste service provider for 2020, 2021 and 2022. 

At the time the City was approached about a fee restructuring, it maintained that REACT should undertake what it called a long term sustainable funding and fee model to demonstrate the rising costs in a transparent fashion. The request resulted in a report that guided the negotiations on back payment. Those negotiations were concluded on September 21, when the REACT board accepted the negotiated terms of service. 

Those negotiations resulted in the recommendation of a retroactive one-time payment. However, for REACT to break even, City Council also enacted a bylaw adjusting the rates bin rates for the balance of 2022. 

At the Council Meeting, Councillor Larry Jorgenson pointed out that the substantial sum represented the fact that there had been no increases for service costs since 2017. 

“This is an example of where we can, we should gradually increase the rates over a period of time, we can avoid these big jumps here,” noted Jorgenson.

Council indicated that the retroactive payment would be made by tapping into operational savings or reserves. After three reads, Council passed the bylaw amending the rates for the year. Rate information is available at humboldt.ca.