Council repeals, replaces city's garbage ordinance; new rules on billing, collections and military holds approved

Warrensburg — The city council voted to repeal and replace Chapter 11 of the Warrensburg city code governing residential garbage and trash, adopting a consolidated ordinance that incorporates staff changes following six months of residential solid-waste service implementation. Barbara Carroll, director of community development, told the council the rewrite combines prior amendments and new clarifications into a single document for public reference. “We don't want to send them to multiple documents,” she said, explaining the repeal-and-replace approach. Major changes adopted - Abatement and simultaneous proceedings: The ordinance clarifies that city abatement (including administrative abatement to remove refuse and place a charge as a property lien) and criminal nuisance prosecution may proceed simultaneously. Carroll said the new language makes clear the city does not need to complete one process before starting the other. - Third-party collection: New language explicitly permits collection of abatement costs through third-party collection agencies and mirrors that language in the fees section; staff said the change responds to recurring delinquencies. - Itemized billing and partial payments: Sewer and solid-waste charges will appear as separate line items on utility bills. The ordinance replaces earlier prorating language; if a customer makes a partial payment and specifies how it should be applied, staff will honor that direction. If no direction is given, payments will be applied first to sewer charges and then to solid-waste charges. - 15-day rule for solid-waste charges: To reduce staff workload and billing complexity for transient accounts, the ordinance requires that a solid-waste charge be placed on an account only if the customer's name appears on the utility account for 15 or more days in a billing cycle. Carroll said the city evaluated five billing models and selected the 15-day rule as an efficient balance between accuracy and staff time. - Military holds: The ordinance carves out military holds from standard vacation-hold rules. Staff will match the hold to the active-duty orders' dates (for example, a September 1 to December 31 deployment), rather than the earlier limit of no more than five months per fiscal year. Council action and rationale Carroll said staff reviewed billing data collected during initial months of service and that the proposed changes responded to issues observed in practice, such as transient account setups and recurring nonpayment. Council members asked clarifying questions about duplexes and multi-tenant properties and confirmed that the 15-day rule applies where account name timing causes charges to shift between occupants. The council moved the ordinance to second reading and then adopted the repeal-and-replace ordinance by unanimous voice vote. What remains: Staff will provide the consolidated, codified Chapter 11 document to the public; Carroll noted the new text is intended to replace prior amendments so the municipal code contains a single current text for solid-waste rules.