Washington trash collection rate to increase
Washington residents should expect to pay more for trash removal after a new solid waste and recycling contract is awarded later this week.
City Administrator Donn Henderson opened bids from three companies at Monday’s City Council meeting. Big’s Sanitation, Waste Management and Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill, which owns current hauler County Hauling, each submitted a five-year package.
Henderson said residents can expect annual increases totaling up to about 30% throughout the term of the contract. The current rate for residential collection is $243, which has been in place since 2013.
“We were very lucky that we got a five-year contract with no increases prior to this, so you can imagine what inflation has done over those five years and what we can expect once we sift through these bids and pick the most viable one for the residents,” Henderson said after the meeting.
Proposals were sought for multiple options, two for the traditional method of trash collection and one for automated collection, which calls for one driver in the truck picking up the trash with tongs.
Waste Management only bid on the automated option; Big’s Sanitation bid on the traditional methods, and County Hauling submitted bids for all options.
Henderson said he will review the bids with the solicitor, with a contract expected to be awarded at Thursday’s council meeting.
“We’ll look at what is viable,” Henderson said. “The option of automated is a very complicated process. It would mean thousands of containers being distributed to residents. It would probably take a year, maybe more, to get those containers to the residents. Council will consider whether they think that’s viable and feasible for us to do. That’s certainly the lower bids I noticed, but it might not be the most practical thing for us to do.”
Council also is considering a fee for landlords to register apartments in the city. The fee would help to cover the cost for the city to gather information such as the owner, the manager and the residents of each unit. The information would be used only in emergency situations.
“They have never enacted a fee on that process,” Henderson explained. “We thought it was fair to people just to make them familiar with the process to do it at a reasonable price, $15 a unit, that’s about a buck and a quarter a month for somebody who owns an apartment or a unit to pay just for us to be able to collect that information. We’re finally going to put that information into databases so we have it collected.”
Also at Monday’s meeting, Dr. Sally Mounts, Washington City Mission chief development officer, asked to have the city consider sponsoring the mission’s request of a state $250,000 Local Share Account grant to go toward building a homeless shelter for women.
“We are literally leaving no stone unturned to build our new $5.5 million shelter for homeless women,” Mounts said. “There are women right now sleeping on the streets of Pittsburgh. We just don’t want that to happen in Washington.”
Mounts said $3.4 million already has been raised for the proposed 50-bed women’s shelter at which she hopes to break ground in March 2024.
Council is expected to vote on the matter Thursday.