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Officials of the organization that operates the state-mandated recycling program for Altoona, Logan Township and Hollidaysburg are looking for ways to increase revenues, so the organization can more easily make ends meet.
An additional total of about $92,000 in annual costs for health insurance and wages since 2019 and slower delivery of entitlement grants from the state, coupled with almost flat revenues, is making it difficult for the Intermunicipal Relations Committee to put together a budget for 2027, according to Executive Director Brock Bryan.
Bryan and committee members discussed potential fixes: charging residents of non-IRC municipalities to drop off electronics at the IRC facility in Buckhorn; asking other municipalities whose residents take advantage of the Buckhorn and Duncansville recycling facilities to pay a voluntary stipend to the IRC based on their number of total residents; and asking the Blair County commissioners to impose a county-wide tax on all municipalities to support the IRC.
"We need to do something," Bryan said.
Accepting electronics at the Buckhorn at no charge has lured Cambria County residents to the IRC site because those Cambria residents need to pay for the same service at the Cambria County Solid Waste Authority facility in Ebensburg, officials said.
There are some Cambria residents who actually live closer to the IRC facility -- which is actually in Cambria County -- than they do to their own county's site, said committee member Brady Leahy.
The IRC's municipal managers support such a charge for non-IRC residents to drop off electronics, Bryan said.
"I think it's a no-brainer," said Leahy, a member of Hollidaysburg Borough Council.
The IRC doesn't earn any money by marketing the electronics it collects, given the need to pay employees to pack, stack, wrap, weigh and load those components, according to Bryan.
"We can't absorb that cost," Leahy said.
"I think it's a good start," said committee Chairman Jim Patterson, a Logan Township supervisor, of such a charge for non-IRC residents.
Bryan suggested two ways the IRC could distinguish between IRC and non-IRC residents.
One would require the purchase of an electronic scanner that shows the municipality associated with an area resident's address.
Such information is often not obvious because postal addresses can include the name of the city or borough for locations in outlying townships.
The other way to distinguish between IRC and non-IRC residents would require the printing of stickers that would be available only to IRC residents at the IRC offices in City Hall, Bryan said.
The officials spoke less about the other options for increasing revenues.
Patterson wasn't optimistic, especially about asking outlying municipalities for voluntary contributions.
It's likely that next month, there will be a more definitive answer to the funding question, Patterson predicted.
Coal out
The committee has learned that its large quantity of surplus land at the Buckhorn is not suitable for the remining of coal, Bryan told the members.
Robindale Energy Services had approached the committee in the spring and worked out an arrangement under which it could conduct exploratory drilling.
The company discovered that the area had been deep mined, and it located the mine entrances, Bryan said.
Under the agreement, the IRC would have been entitled to 8% of the market value of coal extracted.
That surplus ground, however, is still in play for a solar farm project, according to Bryan.
The proposal for the solar farm would involve up to
37 acres of the approximately 475 acres at the Buckhorn site -- of which the compost facility occupies only 22 acres.
The plan is for a consortium of two companies to make a lease payment of $1,600 per acre.
The committee would also receive a share of revenues earned by the consortium from selling electricity to the grid.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.