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Recycling event planned for Wednesday night
Tag Archives: Waste Management
Public Works to recommend PDC for waste hauling contract
On July 28 the city agreed to send out requests for proposals (RFPs) for a new garbage hauling contract (the current one expires at the end of the year). Only two companies submitted bids: Waste Management (the current hauler) and Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). According to a report released today from the Public Works Department:
In reviewing the responses it is clear PDC provided the best pricing in almost all categories and further discussion in this report will be based on our recommendation to award all service contracts covered by this RFP to the Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). Staff will be recommending the Alternate Proposal from PDC for consideration by City Council at the October 13, 2009 City Council meeting.
PDC’s “alternate proposal” is to provide exactly the same service we have plus citywide recycling collection, all for a $5 million flat rate. Specifically, the proposal would include these services:
- Residential Refuse Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
- Landscape Waste Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
- Neighborhood drop boxes, tire disposal and dead animal service (as currently provided)
- Condominium and City Building refuse collection (as currently provided)
- Collection of Recyclables from curbside on a monthly basis for customers wishing to participate. A 95-gallon cart for single stream recyclables collection will be provided for a refundable deposit of $50. There would be no monthly cost for the service.
The good news is that we wouldn’t be losing any services we currently have, and we would finally get recycling collection as part of our base contract. The bad news is that recycling would only be picked up once a month, curbside only, and only from a PDC-provided wheeled cart.
For families that really get into it, recycling can account for 75% or more of their refuse. That’s going to really pile up over a month’s time. Granted, it won’t stink like garbage, but it will take more than a 95 gallon toter to hold it all. This seems less than ideal, which is why I never fail to find some dumpsters for rent near me and dispose responsibly.
There’s no reason recycling pickup couldn’t be accommodated in the alleys, especially since that’s where all the garbage and lawn waste collection is done. By requiring recycling to be curbside only, many in older neighborhoods would be precluded from even participating. Since those participating will have to use PDC-supplied 95-gallon bins, and since many older homes don’t have direct outdoor access from their garages/back yards to the front of their homes, the only way these neighbors could participate is by wheeling their bin down the alley to the side street, down the side street to the intersection, then down their own street, finally placing it in front of their house. Or, alternatively, they could wheel the 95-gallon toter through their house and down their front steps to the street. Kind of ridiculous, wouldn’t you say? There’s a reason why older neighborhoods have alleys. The city should insist that garbage haulers use them.
The PDC-provided wheeled cart is only bad in that it’s exclusive. If someone already owns a dedicated toter for recycling, they will have to plunk down another $50 (refundable though it may be) for this PDC-branded toter. It’s nice to have the toters available for use if you need one, but why force others to take one they don’t need? Are they going to tell us that they have a special, proprietary design to their toters and trucks such that only PDC toters are compatible? If we’re trying to encourage recycling, why do we want to add this entry cost? We’re not requiring everyone to fork over $50 for a toter for regular garbage.
According to the report from Public Works, PDC also provided the cost of providing this same service except that they would pick up recycling and landscape waste on an every-other-week basis. The cost of that solution is $6,186,664.27 ($1,186,664.27 more than the plan outlined above). I don’t understand why this costs so much more. Maybe it will be explained at the council meeting. It seems to me the more expensive plan actually requires fewer collection trips. Think about it:
| $5M Plan | $6.1M Plan | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 landscape waste collections per month | 2 landscape waste collections per month | |||
| + | 1 recycling collection per month | + | 2 recycling collections per month | |
| = | 5 total collections | = | 4 total collections | |
“Ah,” you say, “but landscape waste is only collected from the third Monday in March through the third Friday in December, whereas recycling is collected year-round!” Okay, let’s look at the whole year:
| $5M Plan | $6.1M Plan | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 landscape waste collections per year | 20 landscape waste collections per year | |||
| + | 12 recycling collections per year | + | 24 recycling collections per year | |
| = | 52 total collections | = | 44 total collections | |
Where is the added cost? Of course, this is probably a futile exercise, because my guess is most of the council members will not go for lawn waste pickup every other week anyway (the lawn waste bags start getting soggy after a while). But it does raise a fair question about how they came up with the amounts quoted.
Bottom line: The proposed contract is better than what we have now at a reasonable cost. The council should try to work out the flaws mentioned above while still keeping costs low.
Would “pay as you throw” make Peoria dirtier?
We have grave reservations about charging Peorians a fee for garbage pick-up, and we think City Council members should, too.
Non-payment will be a problem. Littering will increase. So will illegal dumping: on county roads, in commercial Dumpsters, even on city streets and parking lots. Garbage very possibly will accumulate, indoors, out of sight of inspectors…. Peoria will be a dirtier city if garbage isn’t picked up at every home, every week. It will be a dirtier city if streets and gullies become dumping grounds for people who quit paying their trash collector.
While these dire warnings may sound like they just came out of today’s paper, they didn’t. They were published in the Journal Star on June 24, 2003. The reason? Peoria was considering implementing a $6 per month garbage fee.
I wonder if anyone had the foresight to quantify how much illegal dumping there was before the fee went into effect so we can compare it to how much there is now. That might give us an accurate picture of how much there will be if Peoria goes to some sort of “pay as your throw” system next year. While there have been reports of illegal dumping since the garbage fee went into effect (one even appeared on this blog), it doesn’t appear to be the widespread plague of filth we were warned would happen.
I can’t help but think that maybe — just maybe — concerns about “pay as your throw” causing Peoria to degenerate into some kind of Lord of the Flies scenario might be similarly overstated. Nevertheless, I understand the drawbacks — specifically, the “pay” part of the proposal.
But the truth is that you’re going to pay no matter what. It’s not a matter of paying or not paying; it’s just a matter of how you’ll pay. If it’s not “pay as your throw,” how shall we pay for it? Raise property taxes? Sales taxes? The garbage fee? Pick your poison. Costs are going to go up even if we didn’t change a thing. Adding recycling is going to raise costs more. Property taxes would be a progressive way to pay for it; raising the garbage fee would be regressive. Putting the extra fee on the user would hit large families pretty hard, and in that sense could also be seen as regressive. Raising the sales tax… well… we have to save that for necessities like museums, civic centers, and hotels….
There are no easy answers, only more questions. But I doubt “pay as you throw,” if ultimately adopted, would turn Peoria residences into mini-landfills. Whatever the reason is for rejecting “pay as your throw,” it shouldn’t be that.
Talking trash
The city’s solid waste removal contract with waste removal solutions for households expires at the end of this year. This contract has been in place since about 1992. Now, if you’re just an average person, you might think that the city had plenty of time to start the process of rebidding this contract. After all, they knew when it was due to expire, and they know how long it takes to negotiate contracts such as these, so logically they should have been able to work backwards from the deadline to determine a time line for the rebidding process.
But they didn’t do that. No, here it is June 2009, six months before the end of the contract, and they’re just starting the year-long process. Naturally, they are requesting an extension to the existing contract that has been in place for 17 years already to allow them extra time to negotiate a new contract. That request was on last week’s (June 23) agenda, but was deferred for a month.
Meanwhile, they managed to engage a consultant to get some advice on rebidding the contract. I don’t know exactly how city departments are allowed to spend their budget, but it seems to me that every other consultant that has been hired by the city had to be approved by the council; this consultant contract never came before the council. However, it must be no big deal because the council didn’t seem to care.
The consultant made a bunch of recommendations on how the city can lower the cost of waste removal. Of course, all those suggestions mean worse service for residents. For instance, they’re recommending that everyone be provided a 90-gallon tote, and that all other garbage containers be outlawed. You wouldn’t be able to buy your own tote, of course — you’d have to essentially rent it from the disposal company. And they want to do away with alley collection of garbage, even though that’s one of the reasons alleys exist, and many older neighborhoods were designed for garbage collection from the alleys, not from the curb.
To their credit, the city council has so far been pretty adamant about keeping the alley collection of garbage, but city staff is trying to convince them to change their minds. They want to big the contract with all-curbside pickup as an option so the council can see how must more expensive it is to include alley collection. There’s only one reason for splitting out these costs: to try to persuade change. One wonders why it’s more expensive to run a truck down an alley rather than a parallel street 130 feet away. Waste Management says their trucks are too big for our alleys (solution: use smaller trucks). City staff says the heavy trucks damage the alley surfaces (question: wouldn’t moving the trucks to the streets just move the damage to the streets as well? Or is this an admission that alleys are poorly maintained in the city?).
The consultant is also suggesting that the city limit or do away with picking up anything that doesn’t fit inside one of the recommended 90-gallon totes. So, whereas now you can throw away that old couch or cabinet (what they call “bulky waste”) — the consultant says that should stop, be reduced to just once or twice a year, or charged an extra fee, such as $10 or $15 per item.
The biggest issue, however, is going to be how to include universal recycling. There is a lot of popular support for alleyside/curbside recycling as part of the base contract. Currently, anyone who wants to recycle has to pay extra and are billed directly by the hauler. That means that a household like mine that recycles pays three times for garbage service: once on our property taxes, once on our water bill, and once directly to Waste Management. Most households are not willing to pay three times for garbage hauling, so they just throw all their recyclables away in the regular trash. In other words, our current system incentivizes people not to recycle. That needs to be changed.
However, that will cost more money. So the question becomes how to pay for such service. One idea is to do the opposite of what we’re doing now: make recycling pickup free, but charge a fee for regular garbage. The way they do this in Morton is by selling trash stickers. However, in a more urban area, there is concern that this might lead to more illegal dumping or other unsanitary conditions as some people attempt to avoid the fee. So another idea is to make all collections every-other week. Regular garbage would be picked up on odd weeks, and recycling would be picked up on even weeks, for instance.
One other change that has been recommended in order to save money is switching to a sticker system for yard waste. Right now, unlimited yard waste disposal is included in the base contract. The cost of that service could be offset or possibly covered completely by charging residents a fee per bag of yard waste. On the other hand, this would be yet another reduction in services city residents already enjoy and for which they already pay twice.
Who would have thought garbage could be so complicated?