To help a recycling hauler facing a harsh market, Plainwell city officials approved a mid-contract increase in what it pays for curbside recycling pickup.
Plainwell City Council members voted Monday, Aug. 22, to increase the rate it pays Chef Container LLC by 45 cents per household per month. It is the same increase Chef has requested and received from other municipalities in Allegan.
That change increases the city’s costs by approximately $6,318 for the final year of a five-year contract, but council members capped the total increase at $6,000. The contract expires in June 2017.
The rate the city pays for occasional bulk recycling pickups for larger items did not change.
Chef Container president Kim Buckley has told other boards that many contracts it made with local townships and cities began in 2012. Shortly thereafter, he has described, the market for recycled materials dropped off by 50 percent or more, leaving Chef to carry out pickup programs with contracts that are priced for a healthy market.
Council members Todd Overhuel and Roger Keeney were reluctant, but ultimately the council vote was unanimous.
Overhuel said Chef had a poor outing with a bulk pickup in the spring.
“We’d never really had a problem before,” he said. “I think it took them a week-and-a-half to pick everything up.”
By that time, the piles residents had placed at their curb had a chance to be somewhat scattered, sometimes into the roads, he said. Even after the pickup, he saw an instance along his street where the crew had dropped a glass-topped table and not properly cleaned it up.
“We have any assurances that things will get better?” he said.
Chef account manager Lisa Briskorn made the presentation to the city council and said the troubles with the pickup had been related to staffing issues that had since been worked out.
“We are on the right track, I can tell you that,” she said. “Last four months, yes, we’ve had some changes in employees.”
She said her goal was to help better educate customers what types of items could be picked up and when. She also said Chef has just started having the company logistics employee drive the bulk pickup route the night before and tag items that aren’t allowed in the pickup.
“It has a number on there for us, so when they call we can tell (residents) why it can’t be picked up and where it might need to go,” she said. “It worked great in Gun Plain (Township).”
City manager Erik Wilson said Chef’s request came too late in the budgeting process to be formally accounted for, but $6,000 had been budgeted as a contingency in case the council approved the increase.
Residents are charged directly for the service. The city’s 1,170 households each were billed $29.50 on the last summer tax bill. That bill is calculated based on the rate the city has through its contract with chef.
Speaking as a resident, city personnel manager Sandy Lamorandier asked what would happen to the program if the city didn’t agree to the rate hike.
“We would understand that” and continue to honor the existing contract, Briskorn said. “It’s just unfortunate that China basically stopped buying recyclables, so we’ve just had to subsidize that these last few years.”
She noted that the requested increase does not make up for the entire drop in price. She also said Kent County’s recycling center similarly raised its rates after posting a recent $1.6 million deficit.
“We want to continue with our recycling efforts; we were founded on the idea to keep material out of landfills,” she said.
Wilson asked if Chef would consider lowering its contract rate if the recycling market suddenly took off.
Briskorn said it was unlikely to do so but that she wasn’t authorized to make that deal at this time.
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