Community

By now you might know that the City Council choose a different company’s proposal for residential garbage and recycling services for the next 5 year contract. The local garbage company did not get approved by the City Council. Jordan business, Elite Waste, has been our residential garbage hauler for the past 8 years. The City gave Elite Waste tax abatement when they built their building and moved to Jordan. What this means is, we have given them back all the city taxes they have paid since day one to help their business get started and expand here. That abatement continues for another 3-4 years. The City has supported this local business for the past 9 years to help them be competitive in their field.

Our current contract with Elite Waste is up at the end of 2016. Since the City Council was concerned with getting the lowest rates for garbage for our citizens and wanted to get some new services, they chose to go out for requests for proposals (RFP). Before the City did this we published a survey to our residents on garbage services. We received a 29% response rate on this survey of those eligible to reply. This is a really good amount for any survey and means to us that people feel strongly about this service contract. Through that survey the City Council was able to draft our RFP and tailor it to what the residents wanted. Most of the services requested were put in the proposal to greatly increase the amount of services our residents will see starting in 2017.

The residents that responded to the survey were asked if they liked the current service. 77% replied Yes and 23% replied No. So service is not a major concern or a reason to switch companies and never was. A majority think Elite Waste has done a great job or are satisfied.

The residents were also asked if the City Council should give the benefit of the doubt to the local hauler on prices if the bids came in close and by how much. They answered the question 50.47% with “No” and 49.53% said “Yes”. However, only 7.35% said “Yes” if the difference was more than 3%. 42.19% of the people said yes give the contract to the local hauler if the difference is 3% or less. The City Council always said they would try to tilt the decision to the local hauler if the bids were close. These bids came back with Elite Waste’s proposal being a $3.32/month higher than the lowest bid for the average home. The lowest bid was $14.35 for the average customer who has a 60 gallon trash and a 60gallon recycling container. This is roughly 20% lower than the bid from Elite Waste. This will save the residents $263,384 over the next 5 years as compared with Elite’s bid which was the second lowest bid. The average home is now paying $20.51/month with Elite Waste under the current contract and they will see their bill drop down to $14.35/month in 2017. This will save all of our residents close to $600,000 over the next 5 years compared to our current contract. Those numbers were difficult to look past.

It was a hard decision for the City Council but the bids were not close enough to give the nod to the local hauler this time. They are a good company and can bid to get our business back in 5 years at the end of this new contract. We understand a few people in town feel very strongly that the City of Jordan should always contract with the local hauler. From our survey results a majority of the residents disagree and are in favor of getting a reduction in prices on garbage services as opposed to paying this much more to give the business to the local garbage hauler. The City Council feels it did the best thing for the majority of the residents on the approval of the lowest bidder on these RFP’s. We hope you can agree it was not done without consideration of our local business. They are a good business and we highly recommend them to anyone. However, the bid process did not work out in their favor this time.

Let’s focus on the some of the many improvements achieved by these RFP’s:

• New company owns and operate their own materials recycling facility (recyclables).
• We will now be offering weekly yard waste cart pick up and weekly organics cart pick up.(Jordan will be one of the first cities in the State with organics offered city wide)
• New Company utilizes clean burning natural gas powered trucks.
• Will provide front load dumpsters for cardboard ONLY for public drop-off at no charge at an agreed upon city location.
• Will provide one year free residential trash and recycling services to any service person that is in “active duty” in the military.
• Curb cancer program with pink carts
• Will provide a one-day 4 hour free bulky item drop off.
• All city building, parks and events to be serviced at no charge.
• Annual fall leaf collection day to be serviced at no charge.
• Annual curbside Christmas tree collection for 2 weeks to be serviced at no charge.
• Organics can be co-collected with yard waste (10 bags/bundles included)
• Two free cart exchanges per year.
• Valet service is free for handicapped or elderly customers.
• No charge for first missed collection (No-Out Fee)
• We are reducing the late fees from over $10.00 to a flat percentage of 15% or $2.25 on average.
• We will no longer be charged the extra fuel surcharge or the dumping fee.
• We will now have a Snow Bird options to stop service and charges if you are gone for 30days or more in the winter.
• The Company will do considerable outreach and education for the community on their services and best methods to use organics, yard waste, solid waste and recycling.
• The big savings that I discussed earlier saving our residents up to $600,000 as compared to our current contract.

With all of these improvements to our residential garbage and recycling services, we believe that going out for RFP’s had an extremely positive outcome for Jordan as a whole. With all the price reductions our residents could add organics or a yard waste cart with weekly pickup and still save money per month as compared to the rates we are paying in 2016. There are a great deal of positives for our residents to look forward to for our residential garbage and recycling contract starting on January 1, 2017 and going out the next 5 years.

Sincerely yours,

Tom Nikunen

City Administrator