On Monday, July 25th, the Lincoln City Council had a hearing on Mayor Beutler's new recycling ordinance. (see video below)  The LCGOP Executive Committee believes recycling should remain voluntary in Lincoln.  We urge you to contact your City Council Members about your thoughts.  They want to hear from you.   The official vote on this ordinance is scheduled for Monday August 1st.

Here are several things to consider:

1. If this ordinance passes, all paper products will be banned from our landfills over the next three years.  Everyone will be effected by this.  If you are a landlord, you will be required to offer recycling to your tenants.  Tenants can expect their rent to go up as a result of this.  If you are a homeowner, you will be required to either pay extra for the paper recycling or be forced to make special trips to the free drop off locations with all of your paper products to avoid a higher garbage collection bill.  This will be an extra burden on Lincoln residents.

2. There has been inconsistency on who is actually responsible if recyclable materials are mixed with waste on a landlord's property.  Is it landlord, the tenants, or would it be the waste haulers?  Violating this ordinance will be a misdemeanor.  In Lincoln, a misdemeanor is punishable by up to a $500 fine and 6 months in jail.

3. The potential cost for new equipment and trucks because of this ordinance could impact smaller garbage collectors in a negative way, and make them less able to compete with larger garbage collectors.  Even if they decide to sub-contract out the recycling it there will be added costs to this process. 

4. There is no guarantee that the city will continue to maintain the "free" drop off sites once the ordinance goes into effect. There is no language in the ordinance that says they will continue these.  If these were eliminated this would force everyone to purchase "curb-side recycling".

5. Because we are diverting recyclable materials from the landfills with the new ordinance.  Landfills will be losing revenue. This would then cause the landfills to increase their costs on Lincoln residents in order to recoup their loses.  Lincoln residents can expect higher garbage bills as a result.

6. The city is using a 2008 study as to the actual percentage of household waste that is available to be recycled to justify the urgency to mandate recycling on Lincoln residents.  What this means is that they don't have any recent data as to the percentage of household waste that consists of recycled materials.  The numbers that they are citing are probably a lot higher than what they are stating, and therefore there is less urgency with this proposal then what we are led to believe with their outdated study.       

7. The complete financial impact of the ordinance to taxpayers is not known.

8. We believe in individual liberty and believe that we shouldn't be compelled by law to purchase a product.  If recycling is such as great idea then we shouldn't have to be forced to do it.  The City is supposed to spend $800,000 trying to educate us about the importance of recycling. They should be able to convince us with that much money rather than using the threat of fines, and jail time in order to get Lincoln residents to recycle. 

The City Council meeting is Monday August 1st at 3:00pm.  If you have questions, please contact LCGOP Chair JP Sabby at (704) 648-8436 or by email at [email protected].  We hope you will take action on this.  

The part about the recycling ordinance starts at 42:19 and lasts until 3:46:00 (yes it took over 3 hours)