News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Mable Lund deposits plastic recyclables into one of the recycling bins in Alpena on Wednesday. The local recycling authority is asking Alpena County to increase its recycling surcharge to help pay for rising costs.

ALPENA — The Alpena County Board of Commissioners is considering raising its surcharge tax for recycling to help cover rising costs.

Property owners currently pay $20 per year to support recycling in the county. The county board could raise that to $25 a year, but, to do so, it needs the boards of all eight townships in the county and the Alpena Municipal Council to approve it.

The last time the county raised the recycling tax was in 2016. If the latest proposed increase is approved, the county board will not be able to raise it further because of policy.

At Tuesday’s meeting of the county board’s Finance Ways and Means Committee, commissioners had mixed opinions on raising the surcharge that would bring in about $75,000 a year for recycling operations.

The newly formed Northeast Michigan Materials Management Authority requested the increase.

A representative from each township, Alpena, and the county sit on the authority.

Cindy Johnson, vice President of the authority, who is mayor pro-tempore of Alpena, said rising costs across the board led to more funds being needed. She said the number-one expense is labor, but the price of gasoline and almost everything else has also climbed significantly.

“The cost of everything has skyrocketed,” she said. “We needed to give raises to our employees or they were going to leave, and you can’t run a business without employees. It just wasn’t sustainable on $20 anymore.”

Johnson said that, when recycling materials begin to add up, the Materials Management Authority must pay to have it taken to Emmet County’s recycling facility. She said that is expensive now, but will be much less when the new recycling center in Alpena County is built.

The authority is in the planning process for a new, $5.8 million facility to be built at the corner of M-32 and Airport Road. Numerous grants and $500,000 from Alpena County will help pay for construction, which could be completed by the end of next year.

Several of the commissioners believe that, because the plan for the new recycling center includes having regional neighbors utilize it, other municipalities should also help cover costs.

“My concern is we keep going back to Alpena County residents, asking them to kick in more money, and the fact it’s for Northeast Michigan, we need to get buy-in from the other counties, ” Commissioner John Kozlowski said.

Commissioner Burt Francisco asked County Administrator Mary Catherine Hannah, who sits on the authority board, if the new facility will have the capacity to handle materials from other counties and she assured him it would.

Still, Francisco agreed with Kozlowski.

“The (Materials Management Authority) needs to do its due diligence, because this shouldn’t have to be a unilateral action that our taxpayers have to absorb, that’s for sure,” he said. “What is good for one needs to be good for all. Right now, I feel like this is unfair and not something I would support.”

Johnson said the authority has been in constant talks with neighboring municipalities and she said they are eager to enter into contracts with the authority, when the time is right. She said the new facility isn’t built yet, but she is confident there will be contracts in place through which other townships, cities, and counties help cover the recycling costs.

“Those people will have contracts and pay us,” Johnson said. “They will have buy-in, but, right now, we’re not even to that point, yet. The center isn’t even built, yet.”

Johnson said the authority’s members are working together and she expects they could vote on the resolution to raise the surcharge. She said that, if things go smoothly, they could all be returned to the county and then a final vote of the commissioners may happen at the end of May.

The matter must be decided by fall because the surcharge is added to the county’s tax bills and the treasurer needs to know what the amount will be.