Dearborn Council to Vote on $33M Trash Contract
Dearborn city council tonight is expected to vote on whether to award a seven year contract to Republic Waste Services for residential trash service, recycling compost and leaf collection, a deal valued at more than $33 million.
The approval would mean the end of work for Waste Management, whose contract expires June 30, and the beginning of a new waste and recycle pickup service for Dearborn residents.
Council will vote on whether to spend $2.7 million to purchase new trash bins, such as the one pictured here, for residents citywide.
Council members also will vote on implementing a new trash and recycling program that would provide each home with one large container for trash and one large container for recycling. Providing two new containers to each home will cost the city $2.7 million, a contact that would be awarded to Cascade Engineering for the residential waste and recycling carts.
The city put in place a pilot program last year to test the new larger trash and recycle containers with homeowners in East Dearborn. Neighborhoods there saw a dramatic decrease in litter and residents were very pleased with the new trash containers. City leaders are hoping for similar results if the council approves going to the new trash collection system on a city-wide basis.
“It is hoped that we will be moving citywide to a system like the one in the pilot area, with one large container for trash and one large container for recycling,” a spokeswoman for the city told us earlier. “The pilot area has experienced a dramatic decrease in litter with this system.”
April 19th, 2010 at 5:32 am
Interested to see if the recycling program will expand with this move, knowing there are some communities where the larger recycling containers can be seen overflowing with things like styrofoam, aluminum foil, etc. In comparison, the current Dearborn recycling program is rather limited, and to make matters worse, on any typical service day, fewer than half of the houses on our block even have the orange recycling bin at the curb.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Haven’t they been using the big containers in the south end for years?
April 19th, 2010 at 8:28 am
Is this something that can wait?….and will we have the freedoms we had with Waste Management?..such as being able to pitch ANYTHING and they will pick it up…. or will we be limited to our giant trash can? I have a family of 6 and believe me we have a lot of trash every week. When money is tight do we really need to buy everyone a new trash can? Don’t fix it if it is’t broken…I understand that the East end has more excess trash on the ground but then if you want to bring money in and fix the problem start charging litter bugs that $500 that you see on the signs. When people have trash laying in their yards for more than 2 days fine them until they pick it up. Start holding THE PEOPLE accountable. We need to stop lowering the standards and get the people to respect the city or force them out with fines. There is NO good reason why someone should have newspapers blown in their bushes and soda cans on their porches.
April 19th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Bep, great comment. From what I understand you can have more than one container don’t know how that works – do you have buy their’s or can you use your own. I don’t understand why they seem to think that this will eliminate litter. If the city is faced with having to cut services why in the world would they spend this kind of money on large trash containers. Who really wants this new service, who is pushing for it and why.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:05 am
I hope this brings an expanded recycling program to Dearborn. If you look to other communities, you’d see that we are far behind where we can and should be in the curb-side recycling world!
April 19th, 2010 at 10:11 am
I wonder who is going to get their pockets lined now? Bet Norwood is returning a favor for O’Reilly.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:49 am
If we have a huge “shortfall” of money for the city to use then wait until good times to spend millions on trash cans. Where are tey going to get the money from? They were so worried about $ 134,000 for the pools, they should be 20 times more worried about the millions for the trash cans.
April 19th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Bep, I agree. Talk about another waste of money. And to be honest, knowing that they only had one estimate to convince us that the pools were unsustainable, I would be interested in seeing the bids on this contract. Seems to be those should be published, or are they and I just don’t know about? Also, the pilot district was east Dearborn, where there is plenty of litter…so why change the entire city. We have ordinances for that sort of thing, and we pay ordinance officers. Do the job, fine the people. I don’t see how a bigger trash can is going to make someone put the trash in it. Sounds like another liberal government idea of trying to make people be responsible by spending money we don’t have. Kevin: We don’t put our bin out every week if it’s not full. You can’t mandate everything, some things are still up to the individual.
See you all the the meeting tonight. We need to have more faces in the seats so they know we are paying attention.
April 19th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Many comments here about not spending this money during what is probably the biggest projected budget shortage we’ve ever faced, make sense. But just so we’re comparing “apples” to “apples”, it would be nice for citizens to be informed as to whether this new contract and the purchase of $2.7 million in containers would cost the city more or less in the next 7 years than the old contract and vendor.
April 19th, 2010 at 11:51 am
I’d like to know how this deal compares to the current service we are getting now? Not just the type of service (specific cans, etc.) but from a monetary perspective. Is the new contract so much lower in terms of cost that it pays for the $2.5M trash cans? If they go the more regulated direction because people can’t pick up after themselves, then I’d expect for the city to completely abolish the people who are supposed to be enforcing all the city ordinances.
April 19th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
All: I hope this wasn’t a “1 bid” contract offer for 33 MILLION DOLLARS? Like the Pool bid was?? If you check Westland Michigan, the Mayor (Bill Wild) and the residents of Westland are very happy with their upgrade to RecycleBank: “We are happy to announce a brand new, city-wide single-stream curbside recycling program that rewards you for recycling through an innovative program called RecyleBank, which allows you to save hundreds of dollars a year on groceries, pharmacy needs, clothes and restaurants through your recycling efforts.” At least get RecycleBank’s BID before you spend 33 Million!! I’ve NEVER heard anything good about Republic Waste Services?? What nearby City’s do they service? What’s the feedback? Who runs Republic, Anthony Soprano?
April 19th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
What will be interesting with this new system is that they will only be picking up recycle items every other week. That should screw most of us up.
April 19th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Did anyone here who won this contract yet?
April 19th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Wake up people,this is just more spin about another great idea to spend a ton of money. Montgomery wards was suppose to be a great investment also,paid parking was suppose to be a great idea and bring so much revenue,the parking structures were suppose to be great ideas also,all of fakoury’s buildings were suppose to be in place and full,the civic center was suppose to only cost 30 million and was going to generate alot of money with the theater,the future convention center is suppose to be amazing and something dearborn needs. PLEASE PEOPLE,WAKE THE HELL UP!
April 19th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
To me this sounds like another spendature that in the end we will find out was a horible idea and the city will be in more debt from it. My guess is that just like all the other decisions in this regime,all the people that conducted the samples and spun this to the Mayor will all be out of here and collecting their pensions just as we all learn over the next year or two that this new garbage contract is a disaster.Maybe this new garbage company has a relative in it thats related to the regime and someone will get a kickback from the contract just like it was always rumored someone got a kickback from those useless EPOKE salt systems the city blew a ton of cash on a few years back.
Hey just like what took place in iraq needs to take place in this city,TIME FOR A REGIME CHANGE.
April 20th, 2010 at 6:45 am
From my understanding we will be limited to our “giant” trash can. The collectors don’t actually come in contact with the garbage. They wheel the can to the truck and then the truck uses forks to pick the can up and dump it. Similar to the way they do dumpsters. So unless you can get your old couch into the can they aren’t gonna pick it up. So now we will have people putting their old couches on thier porches and using them as outdoor furniture….hmmmm where have I seen this before?….Oh ya, thats right…DETROIT!
April 20th, 2010 at 8:08 am
They have a “bulk truck” that picks up the big items such as a couch or appliance’s. If the new tote’s are going to be used they can do a city block in half the time it would take a rear loader.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Bep – unless I heard it wrong I thought they said if you have stuff other than what will fit in the big container a SECOND truck would come around to pick up excess trash. So now you have 2 trucks driving around picking up trash instead of one.
April 20th, 2010 at 9:40 am
God help us!
April 20th, 2010 at 10:29 am
So what happened in the vote????
April 20th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Unanimous approval – no formal vote was taken.
April 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
This is crazy!
April 20th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Oh and I heard Cheli’s and Baileys are for sale? Is this true? And Double Olive is being evicted?
April 20th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Deep’s newer article didn’t indicate if it was unanimous approval, but it did indicate council approved it. We should want to know if this contract saves the city taxpayers money or does it cost taxpayers more than the current contract with Waste Management. If it costs less, then I have no issue with it.
April 20th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
According to the latest Press and Guide article online the new contract is expected to save the city about $363,015 per year over the next seven years on trash collection.
April 21st, 2010 at 1:44 am
For what it’s worth, last week they emptied all of our orange recycling bins into a regular garbage truck. How stupid. To think, all week we were carefully rinsing every recyclable container, sorting even the smallest bits of paper, etc, what was the point? Makes me wonder how often this happens when I’m not around. You know how long glass lasts, right? FOREVER. It does not decompoed at all. And to think I wasted my time washing it.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:37 am
I believe they are using the standard trucks sometimes for recycle only. It gets taken to their recycle facility.