By Kris Leonhardt

Editor

MARSHFIELD — A motion brought forward the Marshfield Board of Public Works will change the way residents handle refuse and recycling in the city.

“Back in July the Board of Public Works reviewed a request for proposals (RFP) to solicit for these services, which would become effective with the new contract on Jan. 1 of 2018,” said Marshfield Director of Public Works Dan Knoeck. “We did receive two proposals. One was from our current provider, Advanced Disposal, and one was from Express Disposal of Thorp, Wisconsin.”

The RFP asked for a variety of pricing factors, including five-, seven-, or 10-year contracts; manual or automated collection; weekly and biweekly collection; and the handling of yard waste as well as curbside collection.

“The lowest cost alternative ends up being the 10-year contract with biweekly or every other week collection of recyclables,” Knoeck said. “Our current contract is about $896,000 a year that we are paying currently for all of our refuse and recycling services. Under this new contract, that would drop to about $839,000 or just short of $840,000 in 2018, so we would see a significant decrease. Then it would build up over time at a modest 1.9 (percent) increase, and we wouldn’t be back to our current rate until 2021 or so, so there are some real advantages for the city to look at that option.”

That option would contract with Advanced Disposal and introduce an automated cart collection system to Marshfield residents.

“The next best scenario is … the weekly collection of recyclables, Advanced with carts and weekly collection,” Knoeck added.

Knoeck said that the Advanced Disposal proposal included a choice of three cart sizes: 35 gallons, 65 gallons, or 96 gallons.

“In order to identify what people want, we would envision some kind of open house or carts available for viewing here at City Hall,” Knoeck stated. “There would be a website that you could log into with your address and your cart preference. We would set a default cart for those that don’t choose one, but we think by offering multiple cart sizes, we can address some of the concerns that have been brought to us early this year when we started talking about the cart option as far as difficulty in handling them and if you don’t have a lot of room to store them in your garage.”

Other items included in the RFP were a Monday through Thursday collection schedule, allowing for Friday collection in a holiday week and no Saturday pickup. Yard waste and curbside collection would continue as they have been handled in the past.

The motion to move forward with the Advanced Disposal refuse and recycling contract was approved during both the Sept. 5 Board of Public Works meeting and the Sept. 12 Marshfield Common Council meeting. The new contract begins Jan. 1, 2018. However, introduction of the automated cart collection system may be delayed until the spring.