At a special meeting called on Nov. 9, Riverside’s village board voted 5-0 to ink a new five-year trash hauling and recycling contract with Allied Waste Systems, which goes into effect the second week of December.
The new contract eliminates Friday collections in Riverside, making Tuesday the only day garbage trucks from Allied will hit the village’s streets. While eliminating Friday pickups will save customers some money, it won’t be a significant decrease.
The monthly cost for curbside pickup for single-family residential customers will be $18.50 versus the $21.77 customers pay today. The new contract also keeps back-door pickup for customers who prefer that option. The new monthly rate will be $31.50, a slight increase over the $30.28 cost now.
Trustee James Reynolds, who along with Trustee Jean Sussman was charged with grappling with negotiating a new waste hauling deal, said that the change to once-per-week pickup will reduce wear and tear on village streets and reduce noise and air pollution in the village in addition to saving slightly on the cost to customers.
Allied will deliver two new 65-gallon containers to each single-family customer, one for trash and the other for recyclables. The new carts will both be green, with different colored lids to differentiate them.
There had been some support for a pay-as-you-throw system for waste hauling, based on individual use.
Reynolds said that research he and Sussman had done indicated that such a system might encourage the accumulation of household garbage, which might attract rodents and other wildlife, and fly-dumping.
Reynolds also said that such a plan would unfairly place the burden on larger families, because waste hauling companies said they needed a certain amount of return in order to provide the service.
“It’s a core service that goes to everyone in the village,” Reynolds said. “Maybe we could do volume-based [charges] for overflow, but that’s not part of this contract.”
-Bob Uphues
