Whitefish considers mandatory curbside recycling program

The Whitefish City Council will take a closer look at mandatory curbside recycling for city residents during a work session on Monday.

Earlier this summer the city advertised for proposals to set up a mandatory curbside recycling program. Evergreen Disposal of Kalispell offered the lowest-cost program, and that’s the proposal the council will discuss.

North Valley Refuse, the city’s current solid-waste contractor, also submitted a mandatory curbside proposal, but the cost was considerably higher than what Evergreen Disposal is proposing, city Finance Director Dana Smith said.

Evergreen Disposal’s bid form states the company would charge $2.52 per stop for recycling collection bi-weekly for the first year — just over $5 per month per customer — with the cost going up slightly over time to $2.65 per stop by the third year.

The annual recycling cost is projected to at $229,320 the first year, according to Evergreen Proposal’s bid form

There is no cost to the city itself, Smith said.

“The way we have it proposed, Evergreen Disposal would be doing the billing [directly to customers] for curbside recycling,” Smith said.

The mandatory recycling would add a third bill to city residents’ utility load. Currently the city bills for water and sewer service and North Valley Refuse bills its garbage pickup separately.

No decisions have been made yet, however, whether the city will impose a mandatory program or how frequently recyclables would be picked up, Smith noted.

The idea of mandatory curbside recycling came up a couple of months ago as the council discussed the effectiveness of the city’s centralized recycling site at Columbia Avenue and Railway Street. Public Works Director Craig Workman told the council that while the site is conveniently located, it’s overrun during peak demand periods, especially weekends and holidays.

An excess of cardboard stacked up beside the collection containers is often a problem, and users sometimes don’t flatten the cardboard boxes as they’re asked to do. People also frequently dump garbage there instead of just recyclables.

The unmanned centralized site opened in January 2016 and is serviced by North Valley Refuse.

The city’s request for proposal directive called for the contractor to collect single-stream, or co-mingled recyclables once every other week.

The chosen contractor would be required to keep records of addresses where collection is refused and notify the city of those addresses on a daily basis.

It remains to be seen if the city will retain the centralized site if it switches to mandatory curbside recycling. During council discussion in June, Mayor John Muhlfeld said it would be short-sighted for the city not to keep the central site.

Workman said the city could consider retaining the site for commercial use only.

The council work session, during which no formal decisions may be made, begins at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug.21, at Whitefish City Hall.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.