Sedgwick County staff recommend lower solid-waste fees and narrower tiers after review of parcel data

Sedgwick County staff presented proposed changes to the county'solid-waste fee schedule for 2026, telling commissioners the committee'backed plan would lower per-parcel fees by reducing tier levels while keeping the overall program revenue roughly neutral.

The proposal grew from a 2023 directive to review the county'fee structure, staff said, and is based on a committee review of land-based classification codes, a new week-by-week waste-volume study with haulers, and updated parcel counts used for billing.

The committee'work matters because the solid-waste fee appears on property tax bills and funds programs such as the household hazardous waste (HHW) facility, remote collection events, electronics recycling, tire events, bulky-waste coupons and illegal-dumping cleanup. "We are being transparent. There's a line there that says solid waste fee and tells you how much it is," said Susan Lynn, a county solid-waste staff member who presented the review and the plan.

Why it matters

County staff and commissioners said the review responds to complaints from municipal parks and other property owners who were placed in higher tiers after the county adopted a revised schedule in mid-2024. Commissioners asked whether the classification scheme and billing process could treat small community parks differently from large regional parks or combine multiple contiguous parcels under one billing unit.

What staff presented

Susan Lynn traced the fee's history to an initial program enacted in 1999 and described how the committee revised tiers by matching land-based classification codes to waste volumes reported by private haulers. The committee found…