Why end the city’s autumn tipping fee holiday when the city can end both the spring and autumn weeklong holidays and let residents decide when they take a free trip to a city landfill site?
This is the premise behind Ward 3 Coun. Michel Brabant’s suggestion during Monday’s operations committee meeting of city council.
At issue was a staff recommendation that the city permanently end its autumn tipping fee holiday and retain its spring holiday.
Both tipping fee holidays are week-long opportunities for residents to drop off trash at city landfill sites free of charge.
City council ended the autumn tipping fee holiday in December 2023 as a two-year pilot.
The results of this pilot were tabled by city staff for Monday’s meeting, which concluded that the autumn tipping fee holiday suspension should be made permanent.
Brabant tabled a successful deferral, requesting for staff to bring forward an alternative plan in time for 2026-27 budget deliberations later this year.
The request, he explained, is for staff to come back “with a report on the cost to remove that holiday week to allow our residents to go anytime throughout the year, be it one or two times, to use the dump.”
This, he said, will assist with the long lineups at city landfill sites during the tipping fee holidays, and allow people more flexibility in their schedule to take advantage of free landfill trips.
The city tracks vehicles by licence plates, city Environmental Services Renee Brownlee told city council. She also cautioned that greater buy-in for free landfill opportunities doesn’t serve the city’s goals around waste diversion, which is at least partially why staff recommended that the autumn tipping fee holiday be cancelled to begin with.
During these free landfill opportunities, she said, “people don’t tend to divert their waste, and it all comes in mixed and ends up at the landfill site, so we may have less diversion and more waste being landfilled if we choose to look at that scenario.”
The operations committee of city council offered unanimous support for Brabant’s deferral, with some members speaking out in favour of his proposal.
Allowing greater flexibility will assist in easing “anxiety, angst and anger toward the city, of being in line for hours and hours,” Ward 7 Coun. Natalie Labbée said.
Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin argued that between limiting residential curbside garbage pickup to a two-bag/container/bundle allowance every two weeks, adding a $5 gate fee at city landfill sites and slashing the autumn tipping fee holiday, “we need to open up a little bit more, because it is causing a problem.”
“The war on garbage is real,” Fortin said. “People are having a hard time meeting those goals. … I will be supporting the deferral, and I really do think we need to look at registering it by address and not by plate.”
Each of the city’s two week-long tipping fee holidays reduce municipal revenue by approximately $66,000.
“The operational costs of the landfill are the same regardless, so whatever we don’t collect in user fees will increase the tax levy,” Brownlee cautioned, adding that the main question city council members must answer will be, “Is it something that the user should pay for if they’re using it, or is it something that the community at large should pay for even if they aren’t using the landfill site themselves?”
The city’s spring tipping fee holiday was first introduced in 2005, and the autumn holiday was added two years later.
During 2024 budget deliberations, Environmental Services director Renée Brownlee told city council members that the program was introduced to help reduce instances of illegal dumping.
Although she said the city didn’t have exact statistics, she clarified, “We know that we are still cleaning it up and that it still does occur,” concluding that the tipping fee holidays haven’t had a “substantial impact.”
This sentiment is reiterated in the report tabled for Monday’s meeting, which notes, “there is no clear evidence to suggest that it has effectively reduced littering or illegal dumping in the community.”
Between Jan. 1, 2024, and May 30, 2025, the city has received 80 complaints regarding the cancellation of the autumn tipping fee holiday, which the report cited as representing “a relatively low level of concern from the public.”
Labbée argued that these 80 complaints are only the tip of the iceberg.
“I really feel like people are just used to us making decisions and they have no choice but to just go with it and they’re not complaining,” she said.
There were 187 cases of illegal dumping complaints last year, which is down from the 258 reports in 2023 and 216 reports in 2022, despite last year being the first to have the autumn tipping fee holiday eliminated.
There are various alternatives to visiting the Sudbury Landfill site, Brownlee said during Monday’s meeting.
The city’s Waste Wise app gives people options as to what they can do with waste, but Brownlee highlighted two options which would nullify many residential trips to the landfill.
This includes dropping furniture and appliances at the curbside for crews to pick up, and purchasing garbage bag tags which allow residents to put more garbage at the curbside than their maximum bag/container/bundle allowance (two) every other week.
There is no limit to the number of extra bags, with tags, that residents can put at the curbside during their scheduled garbage collection day.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.