Lincoln City Council
Aldermen expected to renew Area Disposal contract 12 months

 

[January 25, 2021] 

At the end of the Lincoln City Council meeting on Tuesday evening, aldermen discussed a topic without taking a vote. Renewing the contract for Area Disposal as the franchised waste hauler for Lincoln will be placed on the next voting agenda on February 1st.

Kevin Bateman and Tracy Welch have been serving as the city liaisons with Area Disposal. Both have had numerous conversations with the trash hauler to work out some of the issues and concerns voiced by the citizens of the city.

Tuesday night Bateman said that the service and the customer satisfaction with Area Disposal have improved by “leaps and bounds.” However, there is one topic that is still a problem, and Bateman said there was a simple solution.

The problem is with rental properties. He said that renters come and go from addresses. Sometimes they have their service discontinued then leave huge amounts of trash outside as a result of the move. The trash then causes an issue for neighbors and the landlords because Area has been told to stop picking up.

He said some other issues come up when a new tenant moves in and again piles up trash and says they didn’t know the trash collection had been turned off.

Bateman said there was a logical fix for the problem. He said that the burden of paying for trash collection should be laid on the landlord and the address, not on the tenant at the address.

He said that an issue had come up in the past, when the tenant had left behind lots of trash. A conversation with the landlord asking him to pay for the pick-up had resolved the issue. But, there would have been no issue if the trash collection had been the responsibility of the landlord in the first place.

Bateman said he felt that the city had failed to consider the code for the franchised trash service and did not come up with a good plan ahead of time. He said he would be in favor of extending the contract with Area Disposal for one year so as to work out some of the code issues on the city’s side.

Earlier in the evening, Chuck Duncan with Advanced Disposal had called during public participation. He had asked if the city would be taking bids or Request for Proposal (RFP’s) for the city’s trash contract. He was told that the discussion would take place later on the agenda and that the city could not yet answer his question.

As the discussion later in the evening evolved, the aldermen did discuss accepting RFP’s. Jeff Hoinacki said he was okay with extending the contract with Area for one year. At the same time, he feels that it would be good to do an RFP “sooner than later.” Steve Parrott was in favor of going out for RFP soon and said that it would add to the competition and competition could benefit the residents of Lincoln.

Bateman said he had no problem with going out for RFP’s, but he would like to wait one year so the city can work out the problems and present the RFP with everything well spelled out.

Bateman also noted that currently because there are empty properties in Lincoln, the city is only 11 households above the minimum customer number required by Area Disposal. Switching the service to the landowner would help keep the city above that minimum.

The question was posed about the rate increases for the new contract year by Ron Keller. He was told that Area disposal had provided rates for multiple years in the original contract. For the new contract year the standard household rate would increase from $16.33 to $16.74 per month. The senior rate would move up from $14.55 to 14.91 per year.

It was noted that the reason the number of households served is important is because within the contract, if the number served drops below the 4,400 household threshold then the city and Area will have to renegotiate the current agreement. At that time, Area will be able to increase the rates beyond what is outlined in the contract if they so choose.

As the discussion came to an end, it was decided that an item would be placed on the next voting session scheduled for February 1st. The motion will be to extend the current contract one year with the prescribed rate increases.

There is also an understanding that the city will go out for RFP at the next expiration date of the Area contract in 2022.

The city will continue to work on the getting all trash collection accounts at Area Disposal into the names of the landlords. Welch was asked if Area is on board with the change. He said that he didn’t believe Area had a preference one way or the other, and that they had been great to work with on other issues. He was confident this would all work out.

[Nila Smith]