The survey asked the citizens if they would be willing to pay $8 to $10 more a month to have recycling at the curb.
“And so 50% of our residents said that they would be willing to pay the $8-$10 more month,” said the mayor. “Now we also understand there’s a big difference between answering that question on a survey and then when the bill comes, will you be committed to it? So conservatively, if we were to say half of those folks would actually pull through and say we have 21,000 accounts. In my mind. that gives us a conservative estimate of maybe 5,000 to 5,500 accounts would be willing to do it when it comes down to putting it on your bill.”
The City has passed the information to ECUA and Waste Management to see if they have any interest in handling the curbside recycling.
“Is there enough critical mass to get that price into a feasible range?” Mayor Reeves said. “We’ll wait to hear back from both of them.”
There is demand for “canned goods on the steel side, aluminum steel cans, plastic bottles like two-liter Coke bottles, and then the heavier plastic, like detergent bottles and milk jugs.”
The mayor said, “We’re going to take an effort internally to be able to offer something temporarily where, in the next 30 days, we’re hoping to have set up perhaps a once-a-week recycling drop-off at our transfer station on Leonard. We’d have a city staff person there and you’d be able to just drive up, drop off your recyclables there and we’d take them right at the transfer station.”
The city is talking with the American Beverage Association about possible grants to help with recycling.
Mayor Reeves expects the results of the UWF Haas study to be released by mid-October.
Bay Bluffs
Mayor Reeves tried to clear up some confusion over the closed Bay Bluffs park. He said, “We have never said that we would demolish Bay Bluffs Park and not replace it permanently. That has never been said and obviously there’s some emails I’m getting, I think there’s been a miscommunication as far as that indefinite. All we’re saying is it’s not definitive in terms of when we would have the funding to rebuild.”
The walkway has to be demolished because it’s a public safety hazard. The estimated cost to replace exceeds $1 million. The mayor said, “We couldn’t find a scenario that allowed us to go put boards in certain places and then be able to continue to say that it’s a safe place.”
He cautioned that the new park may be different.
“There’s a very real possibility that it is not going to be replaced verbatim the way it’s set up right now,” Mayor Reeves said. “There might be walking path elements of it. Maybe the boardwalk goes a different direction for cost reasons, for safety reasons than otherwise. This park was designed 40 years ago. A lot of erosions happened since then. A lot of other things have happened since then. So it’s much more likely that this park ends up with some kind of really in a new version when it is funded than what sits out there today.”
Baptist Discussions
Mayor Reeves was very positive about his Tuesday morning meeting with Baptist Hospital.
“We are very much aligned and knowing that the impact of what this legacy campus can be, how it is important to the surrounding community, how it’s important to the future of the city,” he said. “I’m confident in our team, and I just don’t have to sign up to do things that we can’t execute. We wanted to make sure that aligned on things that we think are realistic and that we across the finish, so very excited to continue those conversations and to get something solidified moving forward.”
While the City might not have a signed agreement soon, he expects to have sufficient assurances from Baptist to ask lawmakers for the millions needed to demolish the hospital and medical towers. In return, Baptist will donate the property, about 36 acres, to the City.”
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