To some, service fee is trash
Arvada will charge $5 monthly to opt out of municipal garbage plan
Arvada wants to boost its sluggish recycling rate and reduce heavy truck traffic, while giving residents a break on their trash bill with a municipally run curbside garbage collection program.
Starting March 8, homeowners in Arvada will be asked to choose from three sizes of trash cans, with the price of service going up with the volume of the receptacle. It’s an incentive-based approach — in use in several Colorado communities — designed to get people to throw away less and help cities better meet sustainability goals.
It sounds good on paper, but there’s a catch: For people who decline to transition, Arvada will impose a mandatory $5.13 monthly “minimum service” fee. Nonpayment could result in a lien being placed on a homeowner’s property.
There’s a growing contingent of Arvadans who think the city is sticking its nose where it shouldn’t. One person on a city message board likened the service fee to extortion.
“We are opposed to a city-mandated monopoly for trash service in Arvada, and we’re asking people to exercise their right of choice and opt out,” said Jonah Hearne, a 20-year resident who next month plans to go door to door with dozens of likeminded citizens urging neighbors to reject the new program.
For Tom D’Agostino, a three-year Arvada resident who is happy with the service he gets from his contracted hauler, Waste Connections, the city’s levy is a no-go.
“I’m not going to pay for something that I’m not going to use,” he said.
City officials say the opt-out fee, which is less than what other communities with similar programs charge, is necessary to make the program feasible on a citywide basis. And residents will still get waste ser
vices — bulky item and leaf and yard waste drop-off events — even if they stay with their current hauler.
Colorado has seen this fight play out in several Denver suburbs. Next door to Arvada, Westminster residents crowded council chambers in 2017 to denounce the city’s plan to implement a centralized trash collection system.
Two years later, voters in Lakewood shot down a ballot measure that would have authorized the city to manage garbage pickup there. Arvada itself looked at consolidating trash service a decade ago before tabling the idea in the face of opposition.
The Arvada City Council passed the current plan in June 2020, and it is scheduled to start July 5.
Kate Bailey, a policy and research director for Boulder-based Eco-Cycle Inc., consulted with Arvada on its new trash collection plan. She said the hubbub over the issue might seem puzzling to much of the rest of the U.S., where municipal trash service is more common.
“People from the rest of the country look at us like we’re nuts,” she said. “This makes a lot of sense, and yet it’s oddly political.”
Incentive to recycle
Arvada will be taking a single-hauler approach to garbage collection, contracting with Republic Services for citywide service in contrast to the nine haulers that currently provide residential pickup in the city.
The city will use the payas-you-throw model, which is in place in several Front Range communities, including Lafayette, Louisville, Golden and Sheridan. Arvada would be the state’s largest city to embrace it.
The principle is straightforward: The more you toss,
the more you pay. In Arvada, a 95-gallon trash cart will cost $19.76 a month, a 65-gallon cart $15.63 a month and a 35-gallon cart — which can hold three to four kitchensized bags — will cost $11.50 a month.
Every household in the program gets a 95-gallon recycling bin at no charge, which Bailey says will goose recycling levels. The proof is in the data, she added.
According to Eco-Cycle, the top recycling communities on the Front Range have citywide programs that automatically provide bins — and communities using a pay-as-you-throw approach stand out, Bailey said.
Loveland, which charges as little as $3.25 a month for a 17-gallon trash bin, is at the top of the list with a 60% recycling rate. Louisville and Lafayette are at 44% and 36%, respectively. Arvada’s recycling rate is below 15%, according to past surveys of haulers, Bailey said.
Colorado’s recycling rate was less than half the national average in 2019, according to a study released last fall.
“Pay-as-you-throw does have a behavior modification element to it, much like tiered pricing for water use helps to incentivize water conservation,” Bailey said.
A 2018 study by the University of New Hampshire found among 34 towns that used the pay-as-you-throw model, waste disposal rates dropped 42% to 54%, according to reporting from The Associated Press. Another study in neighboring Maine found that cities with the incentive-based system generated approximately 44% less trash per capita than communities without the program.
In Sheridan, a workingclass suburb south of Denver, City Manager Devin Granbery said the city’s payas-you-throw program has brought noticeable benefits since it launched in 2014.
“Recycling has gone from virtually zero to 75% of our residents participating in curbside recycling, with a diversion rate of 15%,” he said.
The system also helps cut down on street maintenance, Louisville Public Works Director Kurt Kowar said. The Boulder County city has had a pay-as-youthrow garbage collection program in place since 2010.
“Trucks have a huge impact when turning and areas such as cul-de-sacs get torn up over time,” Kowar said. “In general, a trash truck equals 1,000 cars per day on the road.”
That’s important to Rachael Smallwood, who moved to Arvada from North Dakota five years ago. She’s one of dozens of city residents who have praised the program online.
“It was a shock that there were so many ginormous trucks putting out all that pollution,” she said. “That’s important to me as our climate crisis gets worse.”
Smallwood said she barely fills a third of her trash can per week and will be opting for the smallest container Arvada offers, giving her a huge discount off of the $30 she pays monthly now.
“Put it on a ballot”
But for opponents of Arvada’s single-hauler trash system, they’re not just bothered by what they perceive as a heavy-handed approach to garbage collection.
They say the means by which the new program was approved — a slender 4-3 margin by the City Council in the middle of a pandemic rather than a vote of the people — is problematic.
“If you all of a sudden change the relationship between the city and the citizens — then put it on a ballot,” Hearne said. “The city is collecting money that a lot of people consider a tax and giving it to a private company.”
Last year’s vote so incensed some Arvada residents that they launched an effort to recall the four council members who voted for it. The recall never made it to the ballot.
Mayor Marc Williams, who opposed the singlehauler contract, also felt the issue should have gone to the voters.
But, he said, “the council has spoken.”
“I knew this would be as contentious as it was 10 years ago,” Williams said.