Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee asks Niggemann to stay on
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
Editor’s Note: LeAnn R. Ralph serves on the Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee as the representative for the Town of Otter Creek.
COLFAX — The Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee has asked Lynn Niggemann to stay on as the administrator of the solid waste and recycling program.
Niggemann, who is the administrator-clerk-treasurer for the Village of Colfax, has resigned her position in Colfax and has been appointed as Dunn County treasurer.
Niggemann will begin her duties as county treasurer on May 28.
As Mark Dietsche, representative for the Town of Grant, pointed out at the April 23 meeting of the Colfax solid waste and recycling committee, the Colfax Responsible Unit and the solid waste and recycling program could not have gotten off the ground and would not be doing as well as it is without Niggemann’s administrative and managerial skills.
State law requires all municipalities to be their own Responsible Unit for recycling or to sign on with another municipality’s Responsible Unit.
The Colfax RU includes the Village of Colfax, the Towns of Colfax, Grant, Otter Creek, Tainter and Wilson, along with the Village of Elk Mound and the Towns of Elk Mound and Spring Brook.
Finances are kept separate for the “Colfax side” and the “Elk Mound side” of the RU, but residents in the member municipalities can use either of the collection sites.
Withdrawal
Representatives for the municipalities decided to withdraw from Dunn County Solid Waste & Recycling in late summer and early fall of 2020.
Representatives for the municipalities were told that the per capita fee for the Dunn County program was going to increase from just over $23 to $60 or $80 or perhaps even $100 per person.
The municipalities were starting to work on their budgets for 2021, and so much uncertainty in the solid waste and recycling per capita fee made it impossible to budget for solid waste and recycling.
An increase in the per capita to $80 would have resulted in an increase to the Town of Otter Creek, for example, of an additional $28,500 and would have resulted in a $60,000 increase for the Village of Colfax. For the Town of Tainter, the increase would have been about $137,000.
Every municipality is working under state-imposed property tax levy limits, so municipalities would have had to decrease the budget somewhere else, such as road maintenance or snow plowing, to keep the solid waste and recycling per capita within the tax levy.
Budget
After the Village of Colfax decided to be a Responsible Unit and other municipalities said they were interested in joining the Colfax RU, Niggemann set up a budget for the RU and was responsible for finding vendors, securing a roll-off company to haul the solid waste and recyclables, and writing up an agreement that could be signed by the other municipalities that wanted to be members of the Colfax RU.
The Villages of Colfax and Elk Mound already owned their respective collection sites and had been leasing the sites to Dunn County for $1 per year.
Once the solid waste and recycling program became active under the Colfax RU, Niggemann became responsible for paying invoices, managing the bookkeeping, coordinating with the vendors and roll-off company, managing employees, filing reports required by the state, applying for grants through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, collecting the money taken in at the sites for items that must be paid for to be disposed of, selling and issuing permits to people who do not live in the member municipalities — and probably an additional list of tasks that the Solid Waste & Recycling Committee is not immediately aware of.
Niggemann said she would be interested in staying on to manage the Colfax RU but that she would have to compile a list of tasks and think it over before she could agree to continue as the administrator of the solid waste and recycling program.
Overload
Jeff Prince, Colfax village president, said the village board has discussed the issue of the Colfax RU and does have concerns about not “overloading” the person who is hired to replace Niggemann.
Taking on Niggemann’s administrative tasks as well as the work of the clerk-treasurer will probably be enough for one person to deal with in the beginning without including the solid waste and recycling program, he said.
Niggemann said that she, too, was concerned about not overwhelming the next administrator-clerk-treasurer and that she would consider staying on as administrator for the Colfax RU for at least a year to help train in the next person and to provide continuity for the solid waste and recycling program.
Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee members asked how much the RU is reimbursing the Village of Colfax for Niggemann’s time to administer the program.
The RU is currently reimbursing the Village of Colfax for $5,500, Niggemann said.
The first year of trying to figure out the solid waste and recycling program was intense and time-consuming, she noted.
The village would have to give access to the solid waste and recycling numbers in order to be able to continue administering the program, Niggemann said, adding that she also knew she would be helping the new administrator-clerk-treasurer from time to time for a while, too.
Committee members expressed their appreciation to Niggemann for the work she has done for the Colfax RU and the role she has played in making it a successful program.
Niggemann said she knew how to budget and had figured out how to administer the program but that members of the committee had made decisions regarding the operation of the program and had worked to find, haul and set up the compactors, and that Terry Stamm, representative for the Village of Elk Mound, has been her “right hand person” for helping to manage the program.
Former Colfax Village President Scott Gunnufson had spent quite a lot of time at the beginning calling prospective vendors, she added.
Audit
The Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee also reviewed the preliminary audit report for the Colfax RU for 2023.
As of December 31, 2023, the Colfax RU had $529,823 on hand.
Committee members discussed the possibility of putting some of the fund balance into Certificates of Deposit to earn interest.
The current rate for a six-month Certificate of Deposit is 5.05 percent, Niggemann said.
During the first three years of operation, Solid Waste & Recycling Committee members wanted to set aside enough money to replace compactors and roll-off boxes if necessary.
Estimates are that replacement compactors could cost at least $30,000 each.
New three-phase electricity compactors run about $30,000, but both the Colfax and Elk Mound site have single-phase electricity to the sites, so the single-phase compactors would be more expensive.
There are four compactors all together, one for recycling at each site and one for solid waste at each site.
Dietsche suggested that if some of the fund balance could be put into CDs to earn interest, the interest money could be used as revenue for the 2025 budget to further reduce the per capita paid by the municipalities.
The per capita in 2023 for the Colfax side of the RU was $28.82, and the per capita for 2024 is $25.75, representing a decrease of $3.07 per person.
The per capita last year for the Elk Mound side of the RU was $40.78, and the per capita for 2024 is $36.47, representing a decrease of $4.31 per person.
At the start
When the Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Program began operating in January of 2021, the per capita was set so it would cover the expenses of the RU.
At the time, committee members had no idea whether revenue from recyclables would exceed the expenses or whether the expenses for recyclables would exceed the revenue.
As it has turned out so far, the revenue from the recyclables has been exceeding the expenses.
The revenue for the recyclables could change at any time so that it might end up costing more to haul the recyclable materials than the RU would receive as revenue.
As committee members have noted, however, the amount in the fund balance is insurance that the RU can handle any unexpected increases in hauling costs, both for recyclable material and for solid waste, and for any decreases that may occur in revenue for recyclables.
The fund balance also ensures that if one or more of the compactors abruptly stopped working and was beyond repair, the RU would have the money to replace the equipment without going to the member municipalities to cover the cost of replacement.
Double payments
Several committee members noted that residents have complained about paying the per capita for Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling while at the same time, they are paying a roll-off company for curbside pick up of their recyclables and solid waste.
As committee members pointed out, state law requires municipalities to offer recycling services, either as their own Responsible Unit or as a member of another Responsible Unit.
The municipalities have no choice in the matter, they said.
Committee members also noted that it is strictly the choice of a resident whether that resident is going to pay a company to pick up their recyclables and solid waste or whether residents are willing to bring their recyclables and solid waste to either of the collection sites.
Committee members pointed out, too, that there are some items that a company which offers curbside pick up will not haul away, such as scrap metal, demolition materials, furniture, appliances or tires.
Residents who have paid for curbside pick up still have the ability to bring the other items that would not be picked up curbside to either the Colfax site or the Elk Mound site, committee members said.
The Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling Management Committee is scheduled to meet next on August 27, although a special meeting may be held before August to discuss with Niggemann whether she wants to continue as the administrator of the program.
