City Council repeals bag fee ordinance
Amid pressure from a citizen group against the city's bag fee ordinance, Fort Collins City Council voted to repeal the ordinance Tuesday.
The council's decision came two weeks after the city clerk confirmed that the group, Citizens For Recycling Choices, had collected at least 2,604 valid signatures to bring the issue back up to council.
Council had two other options: to refer the ordinance to the April 7 ballot or to call a special election for it. The motion to repeal the ordinance passed on a 6-1 vote with Councilmember Lisa Poppaw voting no.
The bag fee ordinance was originally intended to take effect in April 2015, placing a 5-cent fee on disposable bags for all retailers and, in turn, reducing the use of disposable bags in Fort Collins. After being passed in a 5-2 vote on Aug. 19, the ordinance drew swift criticism.
Later that month, Citizens for Recycling Choices filed a notice of protest with the city clerk's office and later went about collecting signatures across the city.
Fort Collins resident Cathy Zitti spoke during public comment before the vote, saying she took her petition all around the city from CSU football games and Old Town to bus stops and the library.
"No matter where I went, overwhelmingly, people supported repealing this ordinance," she said, adding that she collected 200 signatures to get the ordinance repealed.
According to Councilmember Gino Campana, the whole process of passing the ordinance and seeing it's subsequent opposition, brought the city's waste-stream dialogue to "a whole new level."
"I think we have a great system and I think it was used here," Campana said, referencing the debate, council's vote and the citizen efforts to get it repealed.
"Citizens went out and formed an initiative and got enough signatures. That's enough for me to say repeal this," Campana said before Tuesday's vote.
"I believe we can be more innovative than charging a fee for a bag."
With the bag fee off the table, council passed a resolution Tuesday that expresses the city's commitment to continuing down the road to zero waste by 2030. With the resolution, the city will pursue adoption of a universal recycling ordinance, giving all residents and businesses affordable access to recycling that would alter the city's current pay-as-you-throw structure.
The resolution also puts an emphasis on the funding and construction of things such as a "reuse warehouse," a construction- and demolition-waste sorting facility and pilot projects with Colorado State University that focus on innovations in waste-to-clean energy technology.
Council also added a line to reiterate that they're not interested in reconsidering another bag fee down the road.