SPSA, improvements top city agenda

The Suffolk City Council will discuss the Southeastern Public Service Authority and holding public hearings on the capital improvements plan and the family transfer ordinance during its meeting Wednes

By Tracy Agnew (Contact) | Suffolk News-Herald

Published Monday, February 16, 2009

The Suffolk City Council will discuss the Southeastern Public Service Authority and holding public hearings on the capital improvements plan and the family transfer ordinance during its meeting Wednesday.

SPSA, the debt-ridden regional trash disposal authority, appears on council’s Wednesday agenda three times. During the council’s work session, it will be discussed in both open and closed meetings. Members will discuss the authority again during their regular meeting.

The council plans to vote on a resolution regarding proposals to privatize the waste management system. The most publicized such proposal comes from ReEnergy Holdings, a New York-based company that is offering a purchase price that it says would enable SPSA to pay off most, if not all, of its debt.

However, the deal would require all eight member communities – Suffolk, Franklin, Southampton County, Isle of Wight County, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach – to agree to new contracts.

Suffolk and Virginia Beach, especially, may be reluctant to do so, because special arrangements with SPSA allow Suffolk to avoid tipping fees in exchange for hosting the landfill and allow Virginia Beach’s tipping fees to be capped at a rate far lower than the other member communities pay for disposing of their trash.

The authority plans a vote in April to raise the tipping fee – the price communities pay to dispose of trash in the landfill – from $104 per ton to $245 per ton. Officials have said they need to raise the fee to keep the authority solvent, but a debt-restructuring plan currently in the works also could help pay the bills.

Also at the meeting, council will hold a public hearing and vote on the proposed capital improvements plan. The plan, totaling more than $1 billion over 10 years, includes $23 million for a new school to replace the decrepit Southwestern Elementary School, and a proposal to fund road improvements through bonds. Only the first year of the plan, if approved, would be part of the city’s budget proposal.

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