Canonsburg adjusts to trash collection fee changes

Canonsburg Borough has been fielding concerns about changes to the trash collection fee structure less than two weeks after the changes went into effect.
One of the concerns is that council eliminated a senior citizens discount, which was somewhere “between 10 and 15%” and cost the borough about $12,000, according to Councilman Rich Russo.
“This was purely a ‘we need to control costs,’ and that was one way we could do that,” Russo said.
To his knowledge, a senior citizens discount was never approved by council or put in place by ordinance, Russo said. Rather, it was a practice started by a former borough manager, he said.
“That was belt-tightening and taking a look at what we can do to keep mitigating the costs,” Russo said.
Another change is the continued billing for collection at vacant homes. Unless a home is condemned or the utilities are shut off, the borough still plans on billing for trash collection, Russo said.
“We found that there was no good solid monitoring of what was vacant,” he said. “Many folks said they were vacant, then when they were occupied once again, they wouldn’t tell us.”
Russo said that was problematic since the borough decided long ago that it would collect trash at the road no matter what. They didn’t want garbage piling up on borough streets due to unpaid accounts, Russo said, but people took advantage of that.
He said they’ve had landlords collect trash from multiple rental properties, and put it along the road at a vacant home, ensuring it would get collected without a bill.
“Many of the vacant properties are owned from folks outside the area,” he said. “It’s very difficult to reconcile the comings and goings of rental properties and vacant homes that maybe were vacant for a time, but are not vacant anymore.”
Council announced in the fall that it would be taking action to try to reduce the growing amount of delinquent garbage fees, which was about $250,000, Russo said. One of those actions was giving Jordan Tax Service Inc. the green light in placing liens on properties with large sums owed. Another was to start only billing property owners, instead of tenants or renters.
“The deficit was just growing and growing, and we needed to stop the bleeding,” Russo said. “These were some ways we could do that.”
Russo said that while he hasn’t “personally” received many complaints about these changes, he’s aware of concerns circulating on social media.
“I believe it’s somewhat of an uninformed discussion,” Russo said. “The communication could have been done earlier by us.”
Letters notifying residents of the changes taking effect Jan. 1 were sent out Dec. 30 and 31, Russo said.
“The majority of people aren’t going to see any change,” he said.