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Public input needed ASAP on recycling

The City of Minot continues to work on a plan for citywide recycling, the latest discussion coming at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

There is apparently a lot left to be decided.

Like how much are Minot residents are willing to pay for curbside recycling?

As we reported today, the council received a study report Tuesday that indicated recycling could cost about $842,000 and possibly more than $1.5 million a year, depending on the process selected.

OK, how much do we want to spend? That would be a good thing for council members to know sooner rather than later, not that recycling will be optional forever. As stated at the meeting, recycling is good for the environment, plenty of people insist we do it, and the cost – well, how much we “want” to pay might not be optional either someday.

But for now, the question of cost is critical to nail down.

There was a lot of good input from city staff and council members Tuesday. Perhaps councilman Josh Wolsky nailed it when he said, “We need a recycling system whereby the incentive and the economics of this thing are good for us. Right now, it’s not there. It doesn’t even look like it’s close to there.”

So, there is time, both to study the extent to which Minot residents want to recycle and for the market for recyclables to improve.

We stress that time should be used wisely – don’t shelve any part of the project yet and stay after it.

But consensus is needed, and we are not there yet, as council member Mark Jantzer stated.

“It’s very important that we have some kind of broad input and figure out what the community really wants – what the majority of the community really wants, because they’re going to be people on both ends of the spectrum and whole bunch of folks in the middle,” Jantzer said.

So, how about it? See today’s poll question and respond if you are able.

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