WESTLOCK – The Westlock Regional Waste Management Commission continues its efforts to position itself financially for the long-term, with a focus on capital and strategic planning.
At a recent March 16 meeting, the commission discussed its 10-year capital plan, capital purchases and passed the 2023 budget which on the operating side came in at just over $1.3 million ($1,323,614.42) while the capital side totalled just under half a million ($475, 571.00), in addition to a couple of policies including a new honorarium policy.
Commission manager Tom Moore presented a proposed new five-year business plan, a new strategic plan and 10-year capital plan which addresses items such as a new Komatsu bulldozer that arrived in late March, a new packer, buildings and cell development. The three plans will be reviewed at an upcoming strategic planning session scheduled for June 21.
“In that we’ll be reviewing the business plan, reviewing and setting the strategic plan. Our strategic plan is set at intervals, so three, five 10 years down the road, where do we want to be,” said Moore, noting the commission approved the 10-year capital plan at the March meeting and also have a budget in place for this year as well as a three-year interim budget, which includes numbers for 2024 and 2025 on the operation side.
“The commission is just trying to get a good foundation of where we’re going and what we’re doing. One thing we are working on too this year, which is part of the budget, is we’ve got phases in our landfill development. Phase 1 is where we are now, it’s seven cells and now we have the engineers looking at Phase 2 for long-term planning.”
Moore pointed out the landfill’s “very old equipment” that is being replaced, including a front-end loader with almost 20,000 hours.
“It was costing us more to keep that front-end loader going than what the payments are going to be on this new piece of equipment,” said Moore. “It’s not a big one, we didn’t oversize it and staff is learning how to run it now.”
Next year they will have to replace a 12-year old landfill packer. “It increases the life of a landfill cell,” he said, noting the impact of inflation. “A year and a half ago you could buy one for $650,000 and now they’re at $1 million, they’ve gone up that much. Inflation last year hit us by about 20-25 per cent so it was huge.”
Other impacts on the budget included a significant increase in some of the tipping fees and some restructuring of fees to try to balance out costs after a $150,000 loss in revenue last year, as well as hiring more workers for recycling and wage increases for staff. Moore also spoke on the impacts of the pandemic from the last two years which saw them have to borrow money to pay for the new equipment instead of dipping “into their capital reserves as expected.”
“From January to March interest rates went up almost one full per cent for borrowing, so those are all things that are impacting us and also, our recycle side is getting busier all the time, which takes more staff,” he said.
Moore is set to retire this fall and one of his goals then is to have something in place so they can plan and prepare for the next cells.
“Just in Phase 1, with changes in protocol and changing in a few things, we’ve actually gained about 20-25 years in cell life,” said Moore, who is optimistic that with the steady progress and work done by the WRWMC “we can make this work.”
“It’s been challenging, but we’ve met the needs of the community and I’m proud of what the commission’s done on that. We have expanded the recycle centre since 2019, we have installed a hydrovac facility, we have a 20,000 tonne compost facility on site now and we’ve expanded the plastic recycling so we’ve done a lot of things.
“We’re getting there, I’m not saying we’re quite in position yet, but we are working towards it.”
