SEBASTIAN — For the first time in a decade, the City of Sebastian is seeking a new contract for trash hauling – and it wants a few perks thrown in.
The franchise with Waste Management expires at the end June, after its original 5-year contract and a single five-year extension and the city is expecting haulers to compete for Sebastian’s business going forward.
Of the 9,500 potential customers the city has, about 4,500 – or 47 percent – sign up for curbside trash collection.
Unlike the City of Vero Beach, Sebastian allows its residents to either opt into or out of the curbside service. Those who don’t pay for curbside collection take their trash to either the county’s landfill or to one of the several convenience centers located throughout the city.
“Solid waste is a politically contentious issue,” City Manager Al Minner said, explaining that when the city has put mandatory collection to a vote, its residents have turned it down. “It’s been an unpopular thing.”
Property owners in Indian River County pay an approximately $68 Solid Waste Disposal District assessment to cover the cost of recycling collection and dumping trash at the landfill.
The assessment does not cover the cost of residential trash collection, which is instead paid for through the contracted hauler – in Sebastian’s case, Waste Management.
Sebastian residents pay $38.82 per quarter – $12.94 for those on a monthly billing cycle – for trash pickup twice a week. The monthly rate has gone up $2.19 since the city first signed with Waste Management.
The rate is tied to the nation’s Consumer Price Index, accounting for the increase over time. Commercial customers’ rates vary widely and depend on the frequency of collection, the size of the dumpster and the amount being hauled away, among other variables.
The City of Vero Beach charges residents $14.32 per month for twice-weekly trash collection. The city also provides side-of-house pickup for those who need it and an on-call trash pickup service for an additional fee.
The service is provided by city workers and trash is billed on residents’ utility bills.
Public Works Director Monte Falls said there has been no push in the city for it to outsource its trash collection because “we have better service.”
While Sebastian is looking for businesses to compete for the curbside collection – seeking the best price for its residents – members of the City Council hope potential bidders will throw in a few extras. Those extras would be awarded points in the ranking of the bidders and worth 10 percent of the overall scores.
The council, during a recent meeting, said it would like whoever wins the contract to include a paper shredding day in the city, a possible electronics and computer disposal day, and help move green energies along in the city.
“These are all very nice things,” Vice Mayor Don Wright said of the list of special considerations the city plans to include in the Request for Proposals – but he cautioned that such items would most likely increase the cost to the city. “Nothing is free.”
Councilwoman Andrea Coy disagreed, noting that the companies might be willing to make such accommodations at no additional cost.
“It wouldn’t kill them to throw in a shredding day,” she said.
To quantify the value of such a service, Southeast Secure Shredding located on US 1 between Sebastian and Vero Beach charges $1 per pound for the first 30 pounds, a flat $30 for anything between 30 and 100 pounds, and each pound over 100 is $30 plus 11 cents per pound. Pickup is available for larger loads.
Whether the trash haulers will include the special requests in their bid packages remains to be seen. And, according to Indian River County Solid Waste Director Himanshu Mehta, some of what’s being asked for might not even be necessary.
The county, through its Solid Waste Department, held an electronics recycling day at the county fairgrounds earlier this month.
It also, though not recently, has hosted a paper shredding day. Both events were contracted out to third-party companies, not to Waste Management or Treasure Coast Refuse/Republic whom the county has hired to handle its own trash collection.
Mehta said the events’ price tags were covered using the income the department receives from the solid waste assessment and recycling revenues the county gets.
He said if the City of Sebastian were interested in a second electronics recycling event or a shredding day, officials could reach out to his department.
“We could look at it,” Mehta said.
The city’s idea of having the haulers foot the bill for the events, though, has given Mehta the idea to ask for the same when the county goes out to rebid solid waste services in 2015. “I think it’s pretty creative,” he said.
Another consideration Sebastian wants the haulers to include in their package is providing recycling containers for some of the city’s busiest parks, including Riverview Park and the Barber Street Sports Complex.
Though the city does not handle recycling – a task left up to the county due to the annual assessment – city employees would be tasked with collecting the recyclables from the parks and taking them to the county’s landfill for processing.
While some Sebastian residents continue to push the City Council to include curbside recycling services in its upcoming solid waste contract, Minner explained that the city can’t do that – it’s a service provided for by Indian River County and already paid for through the tax bills.
In order for Sebastian to contract with anyone other than the county to provide residential or commercial recycling, the city would have to figure out a way to extricate itself from the county’s tax assessment.
An exception is the City of Fellsmere, which is conducting a test to see if residents would increase their recycling if provided with large, wheeled bins that don’t require recyclables to be sorted.
Fellsmere City Manager Jason Nunemaker said that his city has extended its current contract with Waste Management with a clause to exit early in the event the city wants to piggyback on Indian River County’s solid waste contract come 2015.
As part of Fellsmere’s negotiation to extend the contract, Nunemaker worked with Mehta and Waste Management to create a pilot project regarding single-stream recycling.
Single-stream recycling would give residents the convenience of placing all their recyclables – plastics, glass, aluminum and steel, newspaper, magazines, cardboard and office paper – in the same container.
Mehta said the county agreed, though it meant the collected recyclables would have to leave Indian River County, taking with them the money the county would have gotten for selling the recyclables. He explained that the recyclables would be hauled to Sarasota, where there is a single-stream recyclable processing plant.
Fellsmere’s project is a small sample, consisting of just 200 possible homes. Nunemaker said the city has issued about 50 64-gallon rolling toters.
Data will be collected from the program to see if single-stream recycling is something the county should consider switching to. Depending on how the program goes, the county could decide to change the way it does residential recycling.
As for the City of Sebastian, proposals from trash haulers are expected to be turned in by April 3. After that, a selection committee will review the bids and make a recommendation to the Sebastian City Council.
A public hearing will be held in June and the selection will be finalized with the contract going into effect on July 1.
