On Tuesday council will again visit the next garbage contract.  DGreport readers already know the options, but now staff has weighed in, recommending the existing program be kept in place for another three years.  This is a first reading (workshop) of that motion, and council is expected to vote next week on how to proceed.

The village survey made it crystal clear residents didn’t see anything broken, and didn’t want anything changed.  Massaging out the senior citizen responses from the survey did nothing to change that overwhelming response.

How will council vote?  Commissioner William Waldack has been clear from the start he will vote to keep the current system, and Commissioner Sean Durkin has been clear from the start he wants to see carts only.  While Mayor Sandack has repeatedly mentioned the fixed costs that must be addressed, he and the rest of council know the contract to extend the current system (with price hikes) covers those fixed costs and is profitable for Republic Services, Inc.

This week’s discussion should make the expected vote clearer.

The Motion is here.

There are four options: 

1. Renew the current solid waste contract with Republic Services, Inc. and maintain the current volume-based (sticker) program.
2. Renew the current solid waste contract with Republic Services, Inc. and implement an automated cart collection program.
3. Renew the current solid waste contract with Republic Services, Inc. and implement the combination cart program with a refuse sticker component.
4. Decline the solid waste program proposals submitted by Republic Services, Inc. and solicit proposals from other vendors via a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

A significant percentage of the village’s 14,550 households served responded to the garbage survey, clearly preferring the current system by a 5 to 1 margin.  10,718 households use the current sticker based system, and 3,832 take advantage of the cart based pickup.  Of note, 2,403 senior households were identified in the staff research.  Seniors typically generate less weekly trash than, say, a family of three or four.  In 2009 each household used an average of 3.35 stickers per month.

Option 1: Keep it the same.

Warrenville uses volume based stickers via Waste Management.

Renewing the same system for another three years has several distinct advantages when compared to the other options.  Among them:

• It maintains lower disposal costs for most residents even with sticker pricing increases.
• It encourages waste minimization and recycling as much as possible.
• It allows flexibility for residents when their service requirements change.

With this option, all features stay.  One Amnesty Day, Christmas Tree pickup, leaf pickup and the 18 gallon recycling bins would remain.

Staff also asked for a proposal to maintain the current program for four years instead of three.

Republic complied, but stated that a four year contract would necessitate a revenue guarantee from the Village for the second half of the four year contract, due to an anticipated reduction in sticker revenues during the course of the agreement.  If council chooses Option1 for four years,  staff will prepare a motion for a four year volume-based garbage program with  the proposed revenue guarantee for the last two years. Pricing would look like this:

Option 2: Everyone gets a cart.

Mt. Prospect uses ARC "grabber" trucks for their cart program.

A village wide automated cart system would have the following benefits:

• No sticker is required, and the containers hold larger volumes.
• No weight restrictions (currently 50 pounds per sticker) means if you can stuff it in, they will pick it up.
• Residents will be less likely to store refuse for Amnesty Day, if they currently do.
• There will be less litter on streets, as refuse, recycling and yard waste containers are all covered containers.

Yard waste containers can be packed as tight and as heavy as you can manage.  Friends in Glenview routinely pack theirs with several bags worth of leaves each fall, garden cleanings each spring, and trimmings every summer.

With Option 2 residents can dispose of one bulk item (furniture, etc.) per week at no additional charge. Amnesty Day would be eliminated.  Residents could suspend garbage service under the proposed cart program for a minimum of thirty days; during that time they would not be billed for garbage service.

Option 2 would also be a five year contract.

Option 3: Combining the elements of Options 1 & 2

Stickers would be a bit more, and carts would be a bit more than a straight sticker or cart program:

The fourth proposal would entail starting over from scratch and putting out an RFP, which the majority of council does not appear to favor at this time.

Extra items

Downtown recycling and annual leaf collection would be added as follows:

Larger recycling carts with lids. These larger carts would provide residents with large capacity for recycling.  Larger carts would also eliminate recyclable items blowing in the street during windy periods.

Condo and multi-unit building residents, despite multiple pleas to be included somehow into a garbage contract, do not appear to be included in any option so long as they use common dumpsters.

Multi-tenant buildings could be covered if:

• The multi-family units have curbside garbage pickup. Buildings served by a common dumpster would not be eligible.
• The building management company / homeowner’s association must purchase garbage carts for its residents.
• The building management company / homeowner’s association would get one monthly bill for garbage service.

The multi-family units would receive garbage collection once per week.  Multi-family units would not be eligible for any Amnesty Day collection.

Republic says 60% of their costs are fixed; incurred whether or not every household has garbage and/or recycling on the curb each week.  This year (2010) estimated fixed costs for the service, if equally distributed to each household participating, would amount to about $8.46 a month.  The other 40% are cited as variable, depending on costs of dumping (Republic uses landfills they manage), fuels and other elements, and revenues (or costs) from recyclables.

Republic, Waste Management, Veolia, and Groot all appear to contract for any of the three options.  Downers Grove is outside Groot’s current residential operating area.  Of the 32 communities surveyed by staff, eight use a volume based system similar to Option 1, ten have a hybrid system similar to Option 3, and thirteen use an unlimited cart based system similar to Option 2.

You can access the esheets which includes charts, graphs, the complete Garbage Survey, and minutes from the Environmental Concerns Commission meetings as well as previous council esheets here.

Previous DGreport posts on village waste and garbage can be found here.

Although the council, in particular Commissioner Durkin, has spoken in favor of a straight cart-based system, residents overwhelmingly are against the village switching them to a cart system.

When asked if they would recycle more if given a larger recycling cart, almost 28% said yes, over 54% said no.  The balance were neutral on the question.

Amnesty Day was a big winner, endorsed by over 80% of respondents.

Almost 4 out of 5 residents take a pass on renting a cart and use their own cans.

A common sentiment here at DGreport.com, residents felt nothing broken, nothing in need of changing or fixing.

The big caveat is 55% of responders had 2 or fewer household members, while 45% had 3 or more.  1,175 residents responded to the survey.

The full document is available here:  Garbage Service Survey

There are also almost 800 comments fully documented.  As noted by John Schofield in his comment in the previous Trash Talk post:

“the voice of the people who responded is pretty clear: keep the pay-for-what-you-trash sticker system.  It would be difficult for the Village Council to vote against this message.”

Toters in 96, 65 and 35-gallon sizes

With more than a year still to go on its solid waste collection and disposal services contract, the village is starting to consider ways to tailor the program to community preferences.

This is good news to the residents who have plenty to say about how their waste and recyclables are collected each week. After all, it’s a chore “14,550 single-family collection units” perform 52 times a year — which should make all of us experts on the subject.

One major point of discussion promises to be whether to maintain a program that allows for a choice of vendor-issued carts that are billed monthly and volume-based stickers.

Many small or recycling-conscious families that generate a small amount of garbage aren’t keen on having to pay monthly for a big 64- or 96-gallon cart, which are currently the only sizes available. Neither are the snowbirds or other residents who travel frequently, as Commissioner Marilyn Schnell observed at the Feb. 2 village council meeting.

Other commissioners suggested the possibility of adding a smaller cart for those families. There also seems to be considerable interest on the dais for large recyclable toters. With recycling becoming second nature to more and more residents, the current 18-gallon bins are an inconvenience, at best.

Mayor Ron Sandack said his family puts out several containers of recyclables each week, as do many of the families on my block. Given that paper accounts for much of the material recycled, Garbage Day is often accompanied by an increase in blowing litter on our streets.

There are other disadvantages to the current program, as well, including its complexity, the confusion surrounding the disposal of bulk items and problems with Amnesty Day, such as the tendency of residents to hoard garbage for extended periods.

And then there is the sticker system, which allows residents to opt out of paying for this core service if they don’t put out trash. “However, costs are still being incurred for the basic operation of the vehicle that, arguably, should be spread across all potential users of the system,” staff wrote.

Sticker costs are also likely to rise faster than cart programs, as vendors require towns to meet minimum sticker sales targets to maintain current prices.

Sandack suggested surveying village residents to get their preferences before the time comes to negotiate a new contract or engage in a request for proposal (RFP) process.

Toward that end, you’ll find a survey on the right sidebar to gauge your preferences on ways to tweak the current program.