For the first time in 40 years, Riverside will have a new firm hauling garbage, yard waste, and recycling from the village. On March 5, the Riverside Village Board voted unanimously to award a five-year contract to Oakbrook Terrace-based Flood Brothers Disposal Company as its waste hauler.
The firm would handle all waste hauling in the village, including from single- and multifamily residential properties and commercial properties.
It’s unclear exactly when the switch to Flood Brothers will take place, but it could be as early at the first week of April or as late as June, depending on whether a transition period is worked out between the two companies.
No matter when it happens, Riverside’s new trash pickup day for single-family and two-unit buildings will be Thursday instead of Tuesday. Commercial and multifamily pickup will also be on Thursday, with a second pickup day on Mondays, if requested.
Flood Brothers, primarily a commercial waste hauling firm making inroads into residential waste pickup, was the lowest of six bidders for the contract. Among those bidding for the contract was Riverside’s longtime waste hauler, Allied Waste Services, which proposed freezing its residential rate of $42 every two months for the next year.
But three firms turned in bids lower than Allied’s, including the low bidder, Flood, which offered to charge $38.38 every two months for single-family residential waste hauling. The savings to single-family residential customers in the first year of the contract over the rate they have been paying Allied will be about 9 percent.
But Flood’s rates for multifamily and commercial waste hauling were also consistently lower than other bidders.
“Their pricing in comparison was the most competitive at every level,” said Village Manager Jessica Frances, who managed the bid process along with Trustee Jean Sussman. “With this pricing, I feel their commercial customers will be very pleased. For some of them the saving will be as much as a couple of hundred dollars a month.”
Flood Brothers’ trucks could be out on the streets as early as April 2, though a deal to transition from the village’s present waste hauler, Allied Waste, is still being contemplated.
Village staff and Sussman began a comprehensive new look at waste hauling services last summer in anticipation of Riverside’s contract with Allied Waste Services, which was set to expire last October.
In August 2014, village officials held a town hall meeting on waste hauling to get a sense of what residents felt would be important in the future. And in October, the village board extended its contract with Allied to March 31, 2015, while it worked out a request for proposals.
“We were also looking to the future,” said Sussman. “Where, as a village, do we see ourselves?”
In addition to a lower base fee for residential waste hauling, Flood Brothers will continue to offer rear door pickup. They also proposed offering a 15 percent discount on waste hauling for customers 65 and older and waiving the additional fee for rear door pick up for disabled customers.
Customers will be provided with a 65-gallon trash carton for trash, though customers who generate less trash will have an option to get a 35-gallon container at a lower cost. Customers will keep the 65-gallon recycling containers, provided previously by the village, unless the containers are damaged or have been replaced already. In that case, the customer would be provided a new recycling container for an additional $2.25 per billing cycle, which is every two months.
In addition to unlimited yard waste removal, Flood Brothers is also contemplating a composting pilot program, similar to one they’ve recently created for the village of Carol Stream.
Details still have not been worked out, but Flood Brothers is planning to offer the composting program to the first 100 homes that apply. For an additional fee, the company will supply an extra cart for food waste, which will be composted at a yet-to-be-identified site, perhaps at the village’s public works facility.
“Logistically, we need to plan it going forward,” Frances said. “In Carol Stream [the composting facility] is on village-owned land.”
Flood Brothers will also provide an electronics recycling dumpster to the village at no additional charge. The dumpster provided to the village by Allied Waste Services came at additional cost.
This story has been changed to correct the bi-monthly rate for single-family residential garbage pickup by Flood Brothers.
