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Forest Hills shies away from garbage collection

Officials in the town of Forest Hills in Jackson County recently explored the possibility of providing trash and recycling collection service to residents. It was a brief exploration. 

“We were wondering why nobody’s ever thought of garbage service and we just wanted to get a ballpark,” said Forest Hills Mayor Kolleen Begley. “It was just way too high.”

Town leaders were exploring the concept of offering residents the collection service via tax dollar funding sometime in the future. 

“It’s $50,000 a year and we only have an $80,000 budget,” Begley said.

More specifically, Forest Hills was quoted $39,000 for weekly trash pick-up, and $15,000 for bi-weekly recycling collection. 

If Forest Hills opted to charge its 125 households a fee to pay for the collection service, the service would have cost about $430 annually a piece, or around $36 monthly per household. 

— Jeremy Morrison, News Editor

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