Three trash haulers submit proposals for city collection
3/24/2011
An automated Toledo trash pickup truck empties a trash can in Toledo.
Allied Waste Services submitted the least-expensive proposal, said Toledo spokesman Jen Sorgenfrei.
The company offered to collect trash once-a-week and recyclable materials every-other-week city-wide for $7.70 a month for the first year of a five-year contract, if the city continues billing it residents. The cost would increase 3 percent annually in every following year.
“Our first looks shows Allied to be the most competitive and could very possibly, with all charges, come in less than what Toledo residents pay today,” said Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said. “We believe it could come in at less than the $8.50 they pay now, and that includes people with homestead exemptions, who are only paying $5.”
The Allied proposal includes the creation of a recycling incentive program that would reward people for recycling by offering savings on things like groceries and gasoline. It also eliminates the city’s “leap forward” program, which changes pickup dates after holidays — a program started under the Finkbeiner administration despite some public protest to cut overtime costs paid to refuse workers.
Allied also offered to buy the city’s 40 automated trash trucks and to continue the city’s policy of offering four free bulk pickups a year. Additional pickups would be $45 each, compared to the current $50 each charged now by the city for extra bulk collections.
The city in 2009 spent $12.2 million to buy 40 automated garbage trucks and an additional $9.67 million to buy about 200,000 trash and recycling containers. Allied would pay $8 million for the trucks.
The other two proposals came from Waste Management Inc. and RR Waste Solutions of Dripping Springs, Texas.
Waste Management proposed charging $8.21 a month plus an additional charge of .75 cents a month to enroll in its recycling incentive program. The company would charge $50 each additional bulk pickup.
Waste Management would also have an “escalator clause” in its contract that would increase the cost after the first year, Mr. Gerken said.
RR Waste Solutions would charge about $10 a month.