City may have to raise trash pickup rates
Yuma residents’ increasing use of the city’s fouryear-old recycling program is helping to drive down landfill costs, but the current monthly trash pickup rate of $11.25 will probably need to increase at some point to keep up with expenses, officials said Tuesday.
Public Works Director Joel Olea said during a Yuma City Council work session that 17 percent of the city’s residential waste is now being put into recycling bins, above the 15 percent goal set by the city and saving an average of $145,000 in “tipping fees” at the Copper Mountain landfill in Wellton.
Though the percentage diverted is still below the 21 percent statewide average, Olea said, “the introduction of recycling to this community has been huge. The fact that we’re diverting almost 5,000 tons from the waste stream is exceptional for an early program such as ours.”
Under the current contract negotiated with Allied Waste (now Republic Services) in 2012, city trucks take recyclable goods to a transfer station at Avenue 3 1/2 E and 32nd Street, and the company hauls them to an El Centro location for processing before being sold on the market. Trash is taken to the same transfer station before it’s driven out to the Wellton landfill.
When Republic sells the recycled content on the market, it keeps 90 percent of the revenue versus 10 percent for the city, a ratio Olea said officials hope could change in the city’s favor when the contract is put back out to bid in 2020.
Olea said the city’s solid waste division is currently running eight trash/ recycling routes, serving residential properties but not commercial accounts, including multi-unit housing. They are preparing to add a ninth to accommodate growth in the eastern part of the city, using existing employees and equipment, he said.
The 2015-16 fiscal year was the first year in at least the last four in which operating costs added up to more than what was collected in
fees, with expenses at $3.4 million and incoming fees just below that, according to a chart shown by Olea. He said that indicates the need for a rate study in the future which would likely lead to some sort of an increase in the monthly fee, among the lowest in the state.
Public Works Manager Joseph Lopez said he would work to make sure any rate increase for residents is as small as possible. He said he came to the city about two years ago from a privatesector solid waste company, “When I was at a third-party division before, the goals weren’t always to keep the rate as low as we possibly can, it was to create new revenue. So it’s very refreshing for me to try and go in reverse,” he said.
Mayor Doug Nicholls said any new solid-waste revenue should be coming in from the recycling program, and “I’d like to see the current rate be held as long as we can stretch that out.”
Olea said the city is getting ready to launch a new educational campaign on recycling called “Out of the Green and Into the Blue,” referring to the color of the city’s cans, and continues to provide other services, either through its own staff of 13 full-timers or with a contractor.
These include household hazardous waste and hazardous waste collection, bulk trash pickup and Christmas tree recycling, he said.
He said a city should consider outsourcing solid waste services if it was currently falling short in several factors, including efficiency and employee retention, and said he didn’t think Yuma had gotten to that point.
“We do not have staff retention issues when it comes to heavy equipment operators, they seem to be the premiere positions within Public Works. If you have your garbage picked up, you probably recognize the same driver every time. If they’re the street sweepers, it’s the same guys performing those tasks,” he said.