The advisory board that developed a new approach to deciding who gets Fort Wayne's trash business recommended a contract that will make recycling easier for city residents without increasing their bills – while saving the city $300,000 or more in the first year.
Instead of negotiating one big contract, the city this year divided the work of collecting and disposing of trash into several different bid categories, hoping to stimulate competition. After bids for trash contracts were opened Wednesday, the city's Solid Waste Contract Committee had five bidders and many options to consider. The choices weren't as difficult as they might have seemed. National Serv-All, which currently has the city's waste contract, was the low bidder across the board. The points of contention weren't who would get the business, but for how long and with what options for residents.
After about 90 minutes' discussion, the committee – composed of two members of City Council and four representatives of the city's neighborhood associations, plus city staff – decided the best course was to give Serv-All the contract to dispose of garbage for seven years at a price of $24.70 per ton. That's about $5 less per ton than the city now pays when it disposes of trash collected during neighborhood clean-ups, for example.
The committee recommended that recyclable materials be collected in single carts, not multiple bins, so residents won't have to separate categories of recyclables. Even though it will cost about $200,000 more per year, they recommended that city residents be able to dispose of an unlimited number of “bulk” items – such as worn-out furniture or old television sets – instead of limiting those to three items per month. The neighborhood representatives strongly supported unlimited collection of such cumbersome trash.
However, City Councilwoman Liz Brown argued against unlimited pickup. Besides saving $200,000 a year, she said, it's hard to imagine that any household needs to toss out 36 old mattresses or broken coffee tables a year. Another disadvantage she pointed out: Allowing unlimited disposal of bulk waste doesn't do anything to begin showing residents that the more we throw away, the more we have to pay, collectively.
One milestone in the new contract, as City Councilwoman Karen Goldner pointed out, is the price to process and collect recyclable material. Serv-All bid a price of $19.87 per ton to process recyclables – almost $5 less per ton than burying garbage. “This is the first time there's a lower cost to process recyclables rather than dispose of them,” she noticed. Since the city instituted curbside recycling nearly 20 years ago, it has paid more per ton to recycle waste than to bury it in landfills – a point that has galled many taxpayers.
Shifting to “single stream” recyclables collection was an easy – and unanimous – choice for committee members. Besides being more convenient for residents, dropping the requirement that people sort recyclables generally increases participation.
The hardest decision for the waste committee was recommending a contract length. Serv-All submitted the only bid for waste disposal – that is, burying garbage – but it offered progressively lower per-ton prices for three-year, seven-year and 10-year contract options.
Most saw locking in the low price bid by Serv-All as an important step. The uncertainty hinged on this point: A partnership of would-be landfill developers, Southwest Development Group, wants to open another landfill in Allen County. The new landfill faces significant opposition – from officials at nearby Fort Wayne International Airport, for example – and it would have to overcome several local and state regulatory obstacles. But if another landfill opens, Serv-All would have more competition in the next round of bidding.
If the new landfill never makes it off the drawing board, committee members agreed, Serv-All would have less reason to bid low when the next contract is available.
Now that recycling is going to become a money-saving proposition for Fort Wayne, the city has an even stronger incentive to promote it, said Bob Kennedy, the city's director of public works.
Exactly how much the city will pay for trash service under the contract entails considerable guesswork, even in the contract's first year, before inflation-adjustment clauses raise prices in later years. The city will split “profits” from recyclables processing 50-50 with Serv-All, but prices for recycled material fluctuate considerably.
And if there's a surge in recycling – or if people generate less total garbage – that would reduce disposal costs for landfilled garbage.
But based on current disposal patterns, the city estimated that it will spend $8 million in the first year of the new contract. Kennedy said his staff is still working on determining how much residents will have to pay per household, but he knows it will be no more and perhaps less than they pay now.
