Mount Vernon might be moving away from a tag system.
The Mount Vernon City Council will be discussing going out for request for proposals for companies to handle solid waste and recycling for the next five years.
At their meeting Monday, June 7, city council members discussed if there were any changes to the proposed RFP seeking bids for the recycling and trash pickup within city limits. The RFP is looking for companies that use containers and more automated pickup than for the tag system that Mount Vernon currently has.
“The pandemic brought into focus a major downfall of our current tag system, which is needing to go out in order to purchase the tags,” said Scott Rose, one of the council members researching this issue for the city. “With city hall shut down, we were made to rely on private businesses for conducting city services, and that is far from ideal.”
Rose also noted that moving to containers as part of the bid as opposed to the tag system Mount Vernon currently employs is being done to seek competitive bids.
Currently, the RFP seeks bids for three different garbage collection canister sizes – 65 gallons collected every week, 65 gallons collected every other week and 95 gallon trash bins collected weekly.
For recycling, the size of the containers is roughly a 35-gallon container or a 65-gallon container collected weekly.
“We went into the formation of the RFP with the assumption that having a recycling container that is larger than the garbage container will lead to more recycling,” Rose said. “Through consultation with waste management professionals in our community, we’ve learned that the opposite is what happens. Further, much of what is being put into the recycling containers isn’t, in fact, recyclable, and, if enough non-recyclable materials are included, then an entire truckload of material can be refused and end up in the landfill instead of being recycled.”
Rose said that with the RFPs for the new garbage and recycling program will come a needed focus on education of what can be recycled, and what should be thrown in the trash to not contaminate loads of recycling.
“The most important thing I’ve learned through this process is the importance of education to all our citizens,” said Tom Wieseler, the other Mount Vernon City Council member who was researching this issue for the City. “Not only the knowledge of what is recyclable and what is not, but why bin sizes are the size we selected, alternative sites for certain items like taking to the Marion recycling building, and possible next steps with curbside pickup.”
Rose stated that he and Wieseler relied on the expertise present in the Mount Vernon community, especially on waste management and recycling.
“One of the great things about Mount Vernon is that we have experts in all sorts of fields willing to lend their expertise when needed,” Rose said.
Wieseler noted that the move to automated service over manual garbage removal comes because of a focus on employee health, ergonomics and workman’s compensation costs.
“I recognize this may knock out smaller, local vendors from this RFP process, but I think now is the time to make that transition,” Wieseler said. “The last time a major decision was made about the garbage process was in the mid 1980s, when Cornell professor Don Cell pushed for citywide separation of recyclable items from garbage. That was 35 years ago.”
Wieseler said he would have loved to see curbside compost pickup as part of the program, but feels it could be added to a later contract with waste removers five years down the road.
“ I now recognize we need to make the first transition happen successfully before we add on the compost component,” Wieseler said. “With the history this spring of handling certain items at the Bryant Road public works site, we need to educate ourselves a little better on how to handle other materials, like organic waste. It is coming, just not right now.”
At the council meeting, Mount Vernon city administrator Chris Nosbisch noted that council is aware that citizens who come from small households and don’t generate a large volume of garbage each week will be potentially facing larger garbage bills moving forward.
Without the stipend for recycling programs moving forward, however, the City would be footing a larger bill to continue the recycling program as it currently stands.
During the meeting, Mount Vernon City Council member Stephanie West asked if there was a possibility for the City to subsidize stipends, which would be managed by Southeast Linn Community Center to help those financially disadvantaged help pay for the increased garbage fees.
The council will be discussing the RFP at the June 21 city council meeting.
“I would encourage anyone who has questions, comments or concerns to reach out to council directly and to attend the meeting,” Rose said. “There is still much work and discussion to do before we arrive at a decision, and we welcome residents’ input.”
RFPs for trash, recycling up for discussion at Mount Vernon City Council
June 17, 2021
About the Contributor
Nathan Countryman, Editor
Nathan Countryman is the Editor of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun.