INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Board of County Commissioners voted 4-1 Wednesday to keep the current system of optional or subscription garbage collection service.
All the options the Board voted on Wednesday are expected to reduce the current $14.98 per month rate for trash pickup by roughly one third.
After more than four hours of discussion and recommendations from solid waste and finance staff recommending the Board choose the universal or mandatory option, which would have saved county residents hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, the drastic change in the system was still too far for four of the commissioners to go.
Commissioner Peter O’Bryan was the lone dissenter, saying that he felt it was time to position the county to achieve the 75 percent recycling goal by 2020 as mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and being enforced by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Commissioner Bob Solari said he didn’t think the actions taken by the Board on Wednesday would go far enough to achieve the 75 in 5 goal, and that next time the solid waste hauling contracts come up for renewal, it will be time to make major changes such as the introduction of a municipal waste sorting facility that could capture recyclable materials from the waste stream.
Commissioner Tim Zorc said he would like the option to revisit the universal collection option in a couple of years, but County Administrator Joe Baird said the pricing could not be guaranteed, that the county would need to re-negotiate the cost at the time. Universal or mandatory trash collection would have been billed through property tax bills in the landfill assessment to save the cost of billing and collections.
Zorc said he was concerned about the county not achieving interim recycling level goals leading up to the 75 percent goal in 2020. As of the last formal calculation, Indian River County was recycling 37 percent of its solid waste. That figure includes commercial recycling of cardboard and other materials.
To the end of achieving the “75 in 5” goal, the Board voted to go to a single-stream recycling program whereby, instead of sorting materials into two bins, residents will simply put all of their plastic, paper, glass, paper, cardboard, aluminum and steel recyclables into a rolling toter.
The Board also voted to go with rolling trash toters as well, and to have trash picked up once per week instead of twice per week.
To foster an efficient transition to the new system, commissioners also voted to add an education component to get the word out to residents and to maximize participation in the recycling program.
It was stated that the five Customer Convenience Centers would remain open, that the county is under contract for their operation until 2017.
The meeting is still underway, with waste haulers making formal presentations to the Board and the decision of which hauler or haulers to choose coming up next.
WastePro, which if chosen would be a new hauler to Indian River County was ranked first in the sealed bid process overall. Waste Management, the company that now has the franchise for the north part of the county, was ranked second.
Republic Services, which has for decades operated as Treasure Coast Refuse, was ranked third. Republic appealed the criteria used to rank the bidders, but the company’s appeal was rejected by the Board.
This story will be updated.
