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About the City By Councilmember Kingery Enterprise funds continued. The Sanitation fund (garbage pickup) is another enterprise fund. You probably noted my comments during the election campaign about having a "garbage" and "landfill" portion of the city bill. The reason we have both goes back to the two separate enterprise accounts that are expected to pay their own way. We pay for garbage pickup that transports our garbage out to the landfill for us. Labor, trucks, maintenance and garbage containers are expensive so we all have to pay to have this service. When the garbage arrives at the landfill every pound/ton of garbage deposited there must help pay for the expense of operating the landfill. Equipment, maintenance, fuel, personnel and DEQ requirements get expensive! We used to have a free punch card so we could take up to 12 extra loads of refuse to the landfill each year without further cost to us. That was only partially true! The city was paying to have that "free" garbage deposited at the landfill. When we have "free" clean up days in the spring the city pays to have that garbage deposited in the landfill. The city, like us, has to pay for placing refuse in the landfill. So in the end it comes out of your left pocket or your right pocket! When I save the "landfill fee" by placing my extra garbage in a dumpster it means I am taking that fee from your "other" pocket because now the city has to pay for my garbage in the landfill and for transporting it to the landfill. I impact both of those enterprise accounts! Plus, now I know, there is a city ordinance that prohibited me from placing my garbage in the dumpster (oops), so I have just set myself up for a potential problem with the police department and the municipal judge! Enough said for this time! Let’s talk about something else! WAM (Wyoming Association of Municipalities) As you probably remember last year the City Council voted to terminate our membership in WAM. I’m sure it was done to save money for other parts of the budget. Anyway looking back we think that was a mistake and we have re-joined WAM. The membership in WAM costs the city $6548 per year and that does seem to be a lot of money. However there is another side of this to this tale. Back in about 1995 WAM worked with several cities in a project that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Wyoming Community Gas that helps us get lower rates on natural gas in our community. Many of you utilize their services to save money. Another great result of Wyoming Community Gas is that our city gets a redistribution of profits back each year if we are members of WAM. We were lucky last year and even though we had dropped our membership we got $7696.48 as our portion. Without being members we cannot receive that redistribution in the future. So we are trading a $6548 membership, and whatever benefits it provides, for $7696.48 return! Not such a bad investment after all! More next month!