The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
City readies to rebid contract
Ten-year deal with Waste Management ends this year
Mentor officials are talking trash again.
City Council, at a recent work session, discussed bid specifications for a new solid waste hauling contract. The current agreement expires at the end of this year.
The deal with Houston, Texasbased Waste Management has been in place for a decade. It included renewal options each of the last five years of the contract.
The plan is to advertise the bids by early May, with opening in June and an award before July.
“It is important to give other bidders six months, since they might need to purchase new waste collection trucks and around 32,000 new carts,” Public Works Director Matt Schweikert said.
There are few proposed changes to the comprehensive hauling
program, which includes weekly yard waste pickup (April through mid-December) at no extra cost to residents. Recycling carts are emptied every other week for an additional fee.
The city budget will continue to subsidize 50 percent of the cost of basic garbage service. The city is paying $930,000 for that in 2021 and $547,000 for yard waste collection.
The average household pays $9.26 per month for weekly garbage collection, including bulk items and recycling.
“The one thought is that, over time, residents may need (or) want larger recycling containers to accommodate the boxes resulting from online shopping,” Schweikert said, noting the increase during the pandemic shutdown.
He anticipates going with another five-year deal with extension options.
“We’ve had good service, well-received by the public, in terms of the types of service,” he said.
Ward 1 Councilman Sean Blake wondered how many contractors could fulfill the waste removal needs of a city Mentor’s size.
The administration is hoping for bids from Rumpke and Republic, as well as Waste Management.
Larger is usually better in terms of price competitiveness, City Manager Ken Filipiak said.
He noted that Mentor was the first city in the area to adopt such a contract.
“A lot of communities have piggybacked off of ours,” he said.
Others to adopt a single-hauler system include Mentor-on-the-Lake, in 2014, and Chardon, in 2019.
Councilman at large Scott Marn recalled the situation before the city started subsidizing garbage pickup, about 20 years ago.
“Residents paid for everything and we had all kinds of different contracts,” he said. “Then recycling started and we had the bins, and the wind would blow (items) down the street. … It’s grown into a real smooth process.
“When we started, it was $2 million and we didn’t have recycling, and now we pay $1.5 million (with recycling).”
Councilman at large Ray Kirchner added, “On any given day, you’d have a number of vendors going down the street. A lot of people don’t understand how nice it is to have one vendor once a week.”
Benefits have included reducing wear-and-tear on roads as well as traffic and the cost to residents, Filipiak said.
Adding recycling carts and solid waste collection helped to divert 46 percent of the total waste stream from the landfill last year, Schweikert said.