CITY of Swan residents will be given an opportunity to have their say on FOGO as part of a review of the three-bin kerbside collection service.

Swan pauses FOGO rollout (Echo News, April 11) reported the city had agreed to review the three-bin kerbside collection service following a notice of motion put forward by Pearce ward councillor Aaron Bowman.

FOGO has been introduced to all or parts of the suburbs of Ballajura, Bennett Springs, Beechboro, Caversham, Dayton, Kiara, and Lockridge and the city said those areas would continue to have the service until the council made a decision on a way forward.

The city said some residents who had moved to the three-bin system – particularly those with big families or medical conditions – had reported challenges with the smaller red-lid general waste bin.

At the April council meeting Cr Bowman’s notice of motion was supported 13-2.

Cr Bowman said the reason for his notice of motion was that feedback from the community had been and continued to be overwhelmingly that a fortnightly general municipal waste pickup was not satisfactory.

When seconding the motion Swan Valley Gidgegannup councillor Charlie Zannino said he had been inundated with emails and phone calls from very unhappy ratepayers.

Cr Zannino said the council needed to go back and reassess, because the current three-bin system was not working and the councillors and the local authority were going to end up with egg on their faces.

“As Cr Bowman said the City of Swan is not like your run-of-the-mill local councils,’’ he said.
“We are huge and we are the most diverse council, therefore we need to consult our ratepayers and do what is required by them and acceptable by them because they are paying the rates.

“So this is a chance to go back to the drawing board and get things right.’’

Pearce ward councillor Cate McCullough, who voted against the notice of motion along with Midland Guildford Cr Sarah Howlett, said it would be prudent to have a briefing first that included all of their considered feedback to city staff.

“We can’t go back to the drawing board without all councillors feedback, without time taken to consider wisely everything before us and I believe that we probably all need to make it a priority before the briefing, to bring what we all individually have from our residents, positive and negative and make sure that that briefing is rigorous,’’ she said.

“City staff are working hard – they’ve identified there are issues and as long as it has taken for FOGO to be rolled out in the stages that have been deemed appropriate, we need to not have a knee jerk reaction and take a breath and actually look at how we move forward.”

Earlier in the meeting chief executive officer Stephen Cain reminded councillors in relation to any potential budget amendment on the issue, August was the last meeting they could do that before they went into caretaker mode with local government elections due in October.

“(Also) there are financial ramifications for this, their are contracts entered into,’’ he said.

“There are legal agreements and you need to be aware across all of those ramifications before you seek to make decisions.’’

Deputy mayor and Midland Guildford councillor Ian Johnson said from doorknocking in Ballajura he had found about 80 per cent of people liked FOGO and the other 20 per cent of people really didn’t like it.

“They were the families and the people with other kinds of unpleasant waste that they wanted picked up weekly, not fortnightly,’’ he said.

But he said people in Guildford were very disappointed that they were not getting their FOGO bins and wanted to know why it was stopping.

Mayor Tanya Richardson said introducing the FOGO service had been a positive experience for some and a negative experience for others.

“We want to pause the rollout to gather feedback from those who have FOGO and those who are waiting for it.

“Council is committed to an outcome that helps our community get the waste services they need while balancing our responsibility to ensure a sustainable environment for future generations.”

City staff are required to report back to the council in time for the ordinary meeting on August 13.

Based on community feedback received, the city will decide to either continue rolling out FOGO to all properties as is, introduce an amended version of FOGO with an upsized general waste bin, change FOGO to a GO (garden organics) service and collect the general waste bin weekly, instead of fortnightly and/or exclude rural properties from the FOGO service.