Some Huntley residents to pay more for waste collection

The new year is bringing a price increase for garbage collection in Huntley.

People who signed up for garbage collection through MDC Environmental Services will see their rates rise by 72 cents a month, while those in the senior garbage pickup program will see a 60-cent monthly increase.

The new monthly rates will be $18.72 a month for people with regular service and $15.79 for those in the senior pickup program.

Residents are billed quarterly and new rates are effective in March, said Greg York, MDC’s general manager. The January bill will charge the old rates for the first two months of this year and the new ones for March.

MDC, based in Marengo, does not have a contract to collect trash in Sun City or at any of the larger apartment developments in town.

The seven-year contract with Huntley started in March 2008 and there have been 4-percent increases every year — the village board set the annual increases when it approved the contract in 2007. The raises continue throughout the life of the contract, York said.

That 4-percent increase goes helps pay MDC’s expanding diesel fuel costs.

When the contract was signed in 2007, diesel fuel was $2.90 a gallon; today it stands at $3.90, York said.

“It just costs me ‘X’ number of dollars to fire up every truck and drive it past every home,” York said. “And that has shot through the roof.”

MDC has collected Huntley’s trash for 25 years. The contract expires Feb. 28, 2015.