(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake City Council Tuesday evening voted 5-0 to renew an agreement with Waste Management for recycling services. City Attorney-Administrator Gregg Owens says under the new contract, residential customers will actually see their rates go DOWN…
“The new five-year agreement with Waste Management will take the monthly residential rates almost all the way back to where they were when we started five years ago, so residents should see a significant decrease in their, I guess those are paid quarterly, so they’ll see a significant decrease in their quarterly bill.”
It’s a different scenario, however, for commercial customers. Owens says they will see a substantial increase…
“It’s a reflection of their costs and I think a reflection of initially low prices to get commercial people signed up, to get the business established and so forth. Yes, those rates are going to go up and they’re just a reflection of what it costs Waste Management to collect and take care of the commercial activity.”
Owens says the exact amount of the increase depends upon several factors…
“It depends because commercial can be picked up monthly, every other week or once a week. If it’s picked up monthly, the increase isn’t as significant. If it’s picked up for example, every week, I think some of those people will see rates that are probably going to approximately double.”
And when it comes to recycling in Spirit Lake, Owens says residents cannot opt out of the program…
“Our agreement with Waste Management is kind of like the water utility and any other utility. If only the people that said they wanted to use it signed up, we wouldn’t even have a program, so it’s basically the minimum that is paid by any resident to have the opportunity to use recycling. The good news is, at least the last time we surveyed through Waste Management, we were seeing participation rates of 80 percent versus back to the old days of maybe 25 percent. The increase in usage is really significant and as you know, that also cuts down on the tonnage that we’re sending to the landfill.”
The new recycling rates in Spirit Lake will go into effect this coming December 1st.
