Post Falls mulls single-stream recycling

POST FALLS - Post Falls in considering single-stream recycling.

The City Council will hear a presentation from Kootenai County's Solid Waste Department on the benefits of single-stream recycling tonight at 6 at City Hall.

In single-stream recycling, residents and businesses have a plastic cart in which they can place all recyclable materials. The intent is to encourage more recycling.

Coeur d'Alene, through Waste Management, implemented single-stream recycling last year. Recycling in that city has doubled - to 54 percent from 27 percent - as a result of that move.

"Other communities such as Twin Falls are now in the 80 percent range of participation," Post Falls City Administrator Eric Keck said. "This is huge. It is a much better program than the current sorting method required today."

Keck said the city is discussing with Phil Damiano of Post Falls Sanitation how a program would work.

"We are trying to figure out a plan in which the consumer does not see any increase at all so as to encourage similar results in participation in the program as Coeur d'Alene has experienced," Keck said.

Keck said the city's contract with Post Falls Sanitation may increase if the city moves in that direction, however.

The council will be asked, if it is interested in single-stream recycling, to provide staff with direction on working out a contract amendment with Post Falls Sanitation.

In other business, the council will hold a public hearing on a proposed land exchange involving a portion of the Treaty Rock Park parking lot and consider a request by Tina-Marie Schultz to use some city center streets for the seventh annual Italian Festival Aug. 19-21.

It recently came to the city's attention that a portion of the Treaty Rock Park's parking lot is encroaching about 20 feet on neighbor Joe Olson's land. The city may give Olson 20 feet along another joint boundary.

For the Italian Festival, Schultz is proposing to close Frederick from Railroad to Fourth and Fourth from Spokane to Frederick.

The council will also hold a budget workshop on Thursday at 7 a.m. at the police station at 1717 E. Polston Ave. The council will discuss budget priorities. The public can attend, but no public comment will be taken.