By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Bronson has never had residential curbside recycling for its residents but the Bronson Town Council wasn’t satisfied this week with a contractor’s recycling proposal that would have raised rates and eliminated one garbage pickup day per week.
GFL Environmental, the company that bought out the city’s previous hauler, WCA Waste, has agreed to return at a later date with at least one option for the council to consider.
GFL representative Skip McCall’s proposal this week was to eliminate Tuesday garbage pickups and run two routes on Friday, one for garbage and the other for recycling for $2.13 more per month than residents pay now.
“You are going to cut out a day and turn around and charge us more?” said Councilman Aaron Edmondson. “You’re going to do the recycling the same day but you are going to charge us more?”
“Correct, but it’s not the same truck,” McCall said. “So, you still have a garbage truck that’s picking up all the garbage but it’s not the same truck.”
In response to questions from the council, McCall said he would come back with a plan that would increase the size of the recycling container from 18 gallons to 35 gallons. He said the larger container might cost more. His proposal for Friday pickups of garbage and recycling would be the same.
Town Manager Susan Beaudet, a resident of Newberry, said she invited GFL to bring a residential curbside recycling proposal to the town council based on an advisory board recommendation made earlier in the year. She said she has residential curbside recycling in Newberry and likes it.
Council members and audience members tossed out other ideas. Retiring Mayor Beatrice Roberts said she thought McCall was proposing to pick up recycling on Tuesday in place of a garbage pickup and collect garbage on Friday as usual.
“We could do that. That’s something that could be an option but in the years I’ve been doing this it seems a lot more convenient if everyone has everything picked up the same day,” McCall said. “Basically, you’ll have your own curbside recycling program in a dedicated truck.”
Mark Kjeseth, who sat on the committee that recommended establishing curbside recycling didn’t like the idea of an 18-gallon bin for recyclables, which he said is too small to hold much, or the increase in price, which several council members also questioned.
McCall said the price he quoted for the new recycling program would increase the price of the residential collection because the company was essentially creating a new route with an additional driver, and he said the recycling truck wouldn’t have a hydraulic arm on the front to pick up containers like the garbage trucks. He said an employee would physically pick up the recycling containers.
His comment led Kjeseth to ask if the company could use a truck with a hydraulic arm, the same type of truck used for garbage, to pick up curbside recycling in a container larger than 18 gallons – perhaps as big as 96-gallon garbage containers. McCall said he would have to check on that. He said a larger cart would be heavier for some people. Kjeseth said 96 gallons garbage carts are currently in use.
“They’re doing that now. That’s a good point,” McCall said. “Whatever the council wants to do. If they want to utilize the 18-gallon bin or the 35-gallon cart, they are a little bit more costly than the 18-gallon bin.”
McCall indicated that the town currently doesn’t separate recyclable materials from regular garbage and it all gets buried at a landfill including plastics. If the recycling program is started, he said county personnel would sort through the recycled materials at the transfer station (the landfill) to separate materials that can be resold on the recycling market.
The one commitment made by McCall was to return with a proposal to increase the size of the recycling container for residential customers from 18-gallons to 35-gallons, but the council was hoping he would come back with multiple options to consider.
Edmondson, on a different subject related to garbage collection, told McCall that three to four weeks earlier one of the GFL trucks left garbage strewn on city streets and didn’t pick up garbage at numerous residences.
“In front of my house was glass and down the street from me was all kinds of garbage all over the street. The school bus had to go through that stuff the next morning. It was all over Bronson,” Edmondson said.
Edmondson said it was a new driver and he just wanted to put a stop to sloppy garbage pickup in the future.
Kjeseth wondered if the two council members and others who were skipped for garbage pickup that day could be reimbursed. McCall said he could check with the billing department of GFL.
Edmondson wasn’t interested in being reimbursed.
“I just want the job done. It’s in the past now. In the future, we don’t want this to happen,” Edmondson said.
McCall said he would investigate what happened. He said he left his business card with all the council members and they were welcome to call him whenever they had a problem with GFL. He would come back with an alternate proposal on recycling.
“I’ll bring you back another option for the cart type option,” he said.
The proposal introduced by McCall this week doesn’t affect commercial customers.
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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting September 27, 2021; Posted October 2, 2021
