Elk Grove looking at donation box restrictions
Elk Grove Village officials are considering stricter regulations on donation boxes in town after seeing neighboring Schaumburg move toward banning them entirely.
“We didn't realize how many of these drop boxes are all over Elk Grove Village,” Trustee Pat Feichter said at this week's village board meeting.
Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson and the rest of the village board informally agreed the issue was worth exploring.
Currently, Elk Grove Village requires organizations to pay $2,500 yearly for a license to place donation boxes in town. But only one group — West Chicago-based USAgain, a for-profit company opposed to an outright ban on donation boxes — at present is paying the fee, said Feichter, chairman of the village's recycling and waste committee.
The policy needs stricter enforcement and penalties for noncompliance, Feichter said.
“This is an outdated policy,” he said. “I don't know that our committee is looking at banning this right now, but we've certainly got to get a handle on this. This is something that could get out of control.”
Feichter also is concerned about unknown for-profit groups placing drop boxes around town without permission from the village or property owners, as well as how they are maintained.
“A lot of times these boxes are overflowing with all kinds of things people drop off from clothes to toys,” Feichter said. “They are sometimes not emptied and spill over on the side. We are trying to see what is a reasonable type of restriction that Elk Grove Village can put on it.”
Two unkempt donation box sites are in prominent shopping centers in front of the Jewel/Osco off Biesterfield Road and Dominick's in the Elk Grove Town Center, he said.
Feichter said future village regulations should distinguish between donation boxes run by churches and other nonprofit groups and boxes that belong to for-profit organizations.
“An awful lot of people feel that they are giving to charity by dropping off things at these boxes,” Feichter said. “(But) it seems that almost every one of them are for-profit organizations ... and it's hard to get information on a lot of these.”
Of the 30 donation boxes in Elk Grove Village, a majority belong to for-profit groups.
“Some of these groups just dump off boxes in the middle of the night,” Feichter said. “They don't ask anybody. These boxes just appear.”
Village officials will review Naperville's ordinance regulating donation boxes, and monitor what happens in Schaumburg before making a policy change.
This week, Schaumburg's zoning board recommended a total ban on donation boxes, with the exception that the principal user of a property could maintain a box on their own site.
The Schaumburg village board will vote on the proposed ban Feb. 28. Officials there were mainly concerned about aesthetics.
Naperville requires permits for placing donation boxes in the city, regulates the number of drop boxes allowed, and sets standards for placement, appearance and maintenance.
“Both of those (ordinances) are going to be good for us to look at and maybe model ours on either Naperville or Schaumburg,” Feichter said.
The issue will be discussed at the next recycling and waste committee meeting.