Interview with the Warden - February 26th, 2026

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Thursday, 26 February 2026 11:14

Warden Marcus Ryan talked about the price of garbage bag tags and the Drinking Water Systems Report for 2025.

OXFORD - There has been a lot of talk regarding the price of garbage bag tags in Oxford County.

The price increased from $2 to $3 this year, and there was a motion recently to drop to $1. It was introduced by Woodstock Mayor Jerry Acchione and City-County Councillor Deb Tait, and you can read more about that online here.

When Oxford County Council signed off on the bag tag increase, they had also approved a six-day collection cycle and a new green bin organics program. These changes all coincided with the introduction of the provincial recycling program run by Circular Materials at the start of this year.

During his interview on the Heart FM Morning Show today, Warden Marcus Ryan said the waste collection contract that was approved by council in 2025 was the cheapest quote they were presented with. He also said the county's garbage collection is 100 percent covered by the bag tags.

"The bill still has to be paid, and if I don't put it on you as a bag tag, I'm putting it on your taxes, and then you will have no choice! Dan could put out 10 bags, and Marcie is putting out one, and you're both paying. The price to replace bag tags with taxes is 5.5 percent, and that's before you look at inflation, ambulance or anything, and we're all just paying that! To me, there is just a fundamental fairness issue there."

The new recycling program accepts more items than the previous one did, which should free up some space in your garbage. The green bin program was also introduced in Woodstock and South-West Oxford this year, allowing residents in those areas to free up even more space if they utilize the organics program properly.

However, the other areas of Oxford won't have the green bin program until May 2027, so Warden Ryan was asked if those communities have been negatively affected by the bag tag increase over the past couple of months. He said they would have to look at the bag tag sales, and those numbers are tricky because a lot of people stocked up on them at the end of last year.

"It was weird in November and December, and it's weird now because of that. So it's kind of hard to know who is buying the tags and who is using the tags. We can only tell by the collection on the trucks how much is going on. We know that people are using the green bins, not as many as I would like yet, but we're also in that change period, and it's still a new thing."

Woodstock and South-West Oxford were able to introduce the green bin program this year because they have municipal service agreements.

Warden Ryan also talked about the Drinking Water Systems Report for 2025 during this interview this morning. County Council received the annual report from staff during yesterday's meeting, and it said 49,000 samples were taken from the 17 drinking water systems in Oxford last year.

Only 0.24 percent of them came back possibly tainted, and Warden Ryan said those samples came back clear when they were tested a second time.

"So all of those boil water advisories we had last year were actually precautionary. So something happened in the sampling that tainted the sample, not the actual drinking water."

He also talked about the Safety Road Measures Report that was brought to County Council and the Thamesford Trojans advancing to the second round of the PJHL playoffs.

You can listen to the full interview below: