Etna Green Town Council approved a five year trash pickup during its meeting Tuesday.
The contract is with Republic.
Clerk-Treasurer Patti Cook said the cost is $14.20 a month per household for trash pickup. Worst case scenario, it will go up to $17 a month in five years.
Cook said the fluctuation in price is due to cost of recycling.
“And that’s for trash every week and curbside recycling every other week. And they have large pickup days twice a year. I mean, we get a lot of service for it,” said Council President Keith Claassen.
Claassen said he didn’t know if the town was going to get a better price. The prices have gone up. From talking to people with individual pickup, they’re paying basically twice as much for trash removal and no recycling.
Pete Callan, municipal manager for Republic, said one thing that was added to the contract was a processing fee.
“Recycling, because China cut out a lot of the recycling products that were going there, processing fees have when we go to the processing plant have gone up 250%,” Callan said. Republic asked the customers to take on some of that responsibility. Best case scenario is that processing fees could go down. Callan said the processing fees have already gone down in some of the towns Republic is dealing with by 3% or 4%. However, the worst case scenario is that the processing fees go up 15%.
Council member Susan Klinefelter asked if the town could take on the processing fees instead of residents, saying it would be approximately $154 a month for the town to pay it.
Claassen said the best way is to have residents to pay their part. Otherwise, if the town pays it, Etna Green will have to raise taxes to make its budget, and residents will be paying for it that way.
The town council asked if more quotes could possibly be gotten for some generators at the sewer treatment plant and the parks building.
The generator at the water plant is to make sure the plant always has power.
State mandates that there be two power supplies. The problem is that the two power supplies are coming out of the same substation. If the substation goes down, there isn’t enough power for the plant.
Barry Baker, water and electric superintendent, said depending on where the tower is at depends on how much water the town has if something happens. If the tower is full, the town has two days of water.
There is a generator at the parks building, so the building could be used as emergency shelter.
The amount for the quotes already obtained were not immediately available to the press.
Baker said the quotes from Midwest Generator Solutions, Mooresville, were the only ones he has gotten. Other companies that he has called have no interest in dealing with the sewer generator.
Klinefelter said with the amount of money the quotes are for, she would like to get more than from one company.
The town council asked Cook to look into which fund the generators could be paid out of.
