If citizens in unincorporated parts of Newton County are going to be mandated to purchase curbside trash pick-up, it will have to come from the Newton County Board of Commissioners (BOC), County Manager Lloyd Kerr told The Covington News Thursday.

The question was raised late in the Jan. 23 joint work session between the BOC and Newton County Solid Waste Authority (SWA) during the public comments part of the meeting. An attorney representing one of the local haulers questioned whether the SWA had the authority to mandate that citizens purchase a service. Several citizens had also expressed their opposition to being required to purchase service at the session.

“We would have to change our ordinances to allow for that to happen,” Kerr said. “Even though they (BOC) have turned over the waste stream to the Solid Waste Authority, there would have to be a local ordinance and since the Board of Commissioners is the governing authority for the county and it would have to be that local ordinance.

“The Solid Waste Authority could not pass a local ordinance so it has to be the Board of Commissioners. The Board of Commissioners will have to do that.”