Rolling Meadows inching toward trash decision
Rolling Meadows is inching closer to a decision about privatizing garbage collection by finalizing proposed prices from two vendors and comparing those prices to what the service already costs the city.
At Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting, Public Works Director Fred Vogt updated the council about the city’s negotiations with both Groot Industries Inc. and Veolia Environmental Services, the two lowest bidders to outsource the service.
The estimated monthly cost per homeowner through Groot would be $22.28 and through Veolia would be $22.74. By sticking with the city services and cutting costs, the cost per homeowner would be $25.27, though city officials said those numbers can could still change.
“We started this by saying to the vendors, ‘Make us an offer we can’t resist,’ and even we were surprised when the offers came in,” Alderman Robert Banger said of the low prices.
Rolling Meadows is one of the few suburbs to still collect its own garbage, and plans to outsource the service in the past have been met with resistance from residents who don’t want to lose the level of service they currently enjoy.
Preserving those services in an “apples to apples” way was one of the city’s top priorities when looking at different companies.
Alderman John D’Astice, who was part of an ad hoc committee to look at refuse privatization, said the most important thing to him was “to make sure whatever the name is on the truck that picks up the refuse, that the services provided are exactly the same, and I think we’ve achieved that.”
City Manager Barry Krumstok will continue negotiating minor changes with both companies over the next three weeks to determine a final price, while the in-house price estimate will not change.
Mayor Tom Rooney said even though the city offer won’t be going any lower, that doesn’t rule it out as an option.
“There are still very much three players in this game,” he said.
Several members of the public works staff attended the meeting but did not speak. Although both vendors have made offers to buy some of the city’s garbage collection equipment, no mention has been made of how staffing would be affected by a change.
The council will look at the different offers at the July 10 meeting and decide what to do from there.
Rooney stressed that there will be public input to talk to residents about the options before a final decision is made.