The City of Ripon agreed on changes to the ordinance on for-profit donation bins.

The first-reading amendment was in response to the San Joaquin County civil grand jury report from June 10, recommending that all cities enact ordinances requiring owners of these bins to receive some sort of written permission before placing them on the property.

The Ripon City Council last week gave the OK to place the responsibility on the bin operators.

A public hearing along with a negative declaration was provided at the October meeting.

Elected officials hope to avoid making these bins become an eyesore to the community of unwanted items such as old televisions, sofas and scattered clothing.

An exception to that is the one at Ripon Elementary, which has been kept tidy.

“We don’t want (bins) to look defaced with trash piling up,” Councilman Mark Winchell said at a previous meeting.

He and his colleagues agreed to keep the “1,000 foot buffer between bins” in the ordinance while reviewing this matter on a case-to-case basis.

Council also agreed with the request the letter submitted earlier by the for-profit USAgain, which operates over 12,500 collection bins in 16 states.

USAgain asked that “donation bins” be changed to “donation / collection bins” as well as the part of the language on the amendment requesting a “consent letter from property owner” to be revised to “property owner or owner’s agent.”

Planning Director Ken Zuidervaart said the reason for that is some here could be absentee property owners.

These bins could only be placed in certain zones in town, sitting only on specified types of surface.

Ripon was among the county cities – included were Stockton, Lodi, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop, and Escalon – required to submit a response within 90 days to each finding and recommendation in the grand jury report.