For now, plastic and paper bags have met their political demise in Durango. On Tuesday night, City Council voted 4-1 to levy a fine on disposable bags with longtime bag-fee opponent Councilor Keith Brant the only holdout.

The bag fee, which will go into effect sometime next year, will impose a 10-cent fee on disposable bags in city’s big stores: Walmart, the two City Markets and Albertsons.

Mayor Dick White said given the “extensive public input we’ve had already … it seems actually it would be bad precedent to have additional input at this time, just because it’s a very controversial issue.”

Even after months of debate, with bag fee proponents arguing disposable bags are an incorrigible environmental nuisance and opponents insisting they are an important approximation of broader political freedoms, Tuesday’s vote was fraught with political symbolism.

One blonde woman who proudly wore a “Bag It” sticker started crying and hugging the men next to her as councilors took their vote.

Enemies of the disposable-bag fee eventually took the mic in the public-comment forum.

Dana Abendroth, a county resident, objected to the city refusing to hear public input about the bag fee ahead of that evening’s vote.

“I think you guys just kind of swept it beneath the rug,” he said.

In enacting the bag fee, the council was “not only affecting city residents, but county residents. I don’t think that’s proper,” Abendroth said before characterizing county residents as “about fed up to here.”

Councilor Dean Brookie responded saying he’d spoken to Abendroth before.

Ultimately, Brookie said, “You get to vote for your county commissioners. People in the city get to vote for us.”

The council decided Abendroth’s concerns would best be addressed by a presentation that had been scheduled to be given later that evening by City Manager Ron LeBlanc.

Abendroth left the meeting as LeBlanc began to speak about the importance of educating the community.

“It’s hard to educate when the students leave the classroom. Maybe he’ll watch on TV,” LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc said county residents who’d threatened revenge on Durango for implementing the disposable-bag fee actually would hurt Bayfield.

“If they’re going to penalize us by not shopping here, you’re going to penalize Bayfield,” he said, noting Bayfield’s coffers swell with shared county taxes collected in Durango, a revenue stream for Bayfield even greater than Bayfield’s own city sales tax.

Bag-fee opponents may devise other ways to protest.

The city’s lawyer, David Smith, said the bag fee already had generated a lot of consternation.

“For the first time in my tenure as city attorney, we’ve had multiple people call threatening to petition,” Smith said. He said bag-fee opponents had a “30-day window, starting today,” to collect signatures from 344 people, or 10 percent of those who voted in the last city election.

A successful petition would either force the council to repeal the disposable-bag fee or trigger a referendum on the issue.

Smith said it would be very confusing if there were more than one petition afoot, so the city clerk would recognize only a single petition committee. He said the clerk wouldn’t mind if the committee’s members grew to be unusually numerous.

“We don’t want multiple petitions circulating in the community,” he said. “But we think it’s only fair to the voters and the city that there be one petition process because there is only one issue: repeal or not.”

At the meeting, LeBlanc also said the city would be cracking down on water thievery, after revelations that county residents often pilfered city water. He said the issue was not one of “city versus county,” but of virtuous citizenry versus scoundrels.

“No one benefits when people steal from the system,” he said.

cmcallister@durangoherald.com