Trash bids show cheaper option

TOLEDO, Ohio (WUPW) - So how much would county-wide trash collection cost you in Toledo?

That question can now be answered. But Toledo City Council only has one week to decide whether privatizing garbage service is a good deal. The alternative: increasing the monthly trash fee to more than $12 to balance the budget.

The anticipation of Toledo's top administrators as they opened the trash bids Thursday afternoon
more resembled kids on Christmas morning. But the numbers in the notebooks for private garbage service proved to be quite a present.

"It looks promising,” said Patrick McClean, Toledo’s finance director. “The devil's in the details, but we're optimistic looking at these bids, at least the preliminary numbers."

"We're looking at least under ten dollars for all three bids,” said public service director David Welch. “We'll have to evaluate them, but they're very good numbers-- better than expected."

Toledo's residential trash fee is $8.50 per month right now for most households, but it actually costs the city $15 monthly to provide garbage and recycling. The rest of the cost is subsidized from the city’s general fund at a cost of $7.7 million per year. The Bell administration projects converting to county-wide collection by September would save city coffers $2.8 million in 2011.

Three bids were received from private haulers that could drastically reduce that base rate.

Red River offered $10.40 per household per month. A bid from Allied Waste came in at $9.47 per month. Waste Management bid $8.21 per month to serve Toledo's 100,000 households.

By comparison, Maumee just renewed its contract for another year with Allied Waste at a base rate of $8.84 per household per month. Maumee officials intend to compare current contracts with county-wide collection and possibly opt-in later.

"I think suburban jurisdictions are going to want to see if, in fact, the city of Toledo can succeed in working with the county on this privatization," admitted deputy mayor Steve Herwat.

Toledo's deputy mayor called it "crunch time" for a couple of reasons. First, the Bell administration’s top brass will crunch all the numbers and send city council a memo on Friday.
Council members will have the weekend to review those figures in time for a special meeting Monday night.

There won't be time for any public hearings, with a week to balance the budget under a mandated March 31 deadline. Herwat stated more special meetings are possible Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday if city council needs more time to make a decision on the trash bids.