After months of discussion with the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors and cities involved, the Transfer Station is raising its fees in the West Central Waste Management Authority.

The Supervisors approved making the quarterly per capita fee $20 at their most recent meeting. This fee hadn’t changed since the 28E agreement was established in the mid 1990’s. Transfer Station Director Jotham Arber says the new rate will bring a revenue of $14,000 for the facility, “Over a five year period that would bring in revenue to help us offset the cost of new loaders, when we look at doing trucks ourselves, when we have to replace the concrete, all of those types of things.”

The City of Adair is already at the $20 rate as it joined the authority in 2006, and it is believed the former transfer station director had planned on increasing the other cities rates at that time. After holding five meetings to discuss the proposed rate change and attending several city council meetings, Arber said Guthrie Center and Bagley are fine with the change, but Bayard and Panora were concerned with an all-at-once $4 increase, while Yale and Jamaica gave no response. Supervisor Cliff Carney gave his reasoning for the increase during their meeting, “If they were all the same and all of them would go up I’d say stagger it, but I’m like Mike (Dickson saying) you got some cities already paying $20 and some paying $15. Let’s get them all the same.”

There were no other changes in the new 28E agreement for the transfer station which the Supervisors approved. The new rate will go into effect July 1st.