The issue arose after East Laurinburg officials used Laurinburg's rate to show that East Laurinburg's new $15 rate was low by comparison.
Laurinburg staff wants to assure its customers that it's collection fees are correct for the services rendered.
Harold Haywood, city general services director , said the city provides more services than the neighboring town.
Laurinburg has weekly collection of trash and bulky items, biweekly collection of recycling, yard waste pickup that averages about a weekly collection rate, dead animal pickups at request and a loan truck program where the city will park a flatbed truck at someone's residence for large loads of trash, all for the $23 monthly rate. The city only charges extra to dispose of building materials and large trees.
East Laurinburg, on the other hand, only picks up trash and recycling with extra fees for anything not contained within the trash can and recycling bin.
The breakdown of the costs per residential customer is $7 for garbage collection, $2 for recycling collection, $3 for bulky items and $11 for yard waste, Haywood said.
The general services director said these rates, which were set in 2007, reflect the current costs of the operation as the solid waste fund tries for self-sufficiency without making a profit.
"We aren't trying to make any money, we are just trying pay for cost," Haywood said.
The majority of the costs comes from three areas – payroll, dump fees and transportation costs, he said. According to last year's budget figures, labor was 46 percent of expenses, tipping fees was 30 percent, and fuel and vehicle maintenance was about 10 percent.
Efforts are constantly made to lower costs, like the city using the one-armed bandit trucks for trash collection to cut labor costs, Haywood said, but whenever the city finds savings in one area, the other areas typically go up.
He said the trash pickup fees are the only real revenue source for the city's solid waste.
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