With the City of Petal’s contract with WastePro for garbage pickup set to end on September 30, city officials are sending out Requests for Proposals in order to allow companies – including WastePro and others – to place bids on that service.
The city privatized with WastePro in 2013. Since then, that company has provided all trash services within the city limits.
“The contract will go out (soon), so it’s time to put this thing out,” Mayor Tony Ducker said. “You’ve got different ways that you can set up a contract, so after a certain period of time, state law requires you to put these things back out for proposals.
“You can’t do anything longer than 10 years (for a contract) by state law, but typically municipalities will go in and do maybe a two-year (contract), with a four-year (contract) and maybe some one-years. So they usually chop it up anyway.”
The city will now issue proposals for a two-year contract and a four-year contract.
“Two (years) will take us to the next administration, and then four would be another one,” Ducker said. “Now, we might add some single years on there.
“But honestly, there’s ways to get out of these contracts if one side of the contract is not holding up their end of the bargain.”
Trash pickup is one of four services included on the City of Petal’s monthly bill, along with residential water, residential sewer and sewer treatment, which is handled in the City of Hattiesburg’s waste lagoons off of East Hardy Street.
Ducker said he expects to get two or three bidders on the project.
“There’s not a lot of folks that do this line of work,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s a tough line of work; it is very labor-intensive, and the cost has gone up a good bit on them. So obviously, we’re price-sensitive when it comes to something like this, because it’s tied into what everyone calls their ‘water bill,’ so we’ll be looking at that.
“We are looking at doing some things different with this one, a little bit more similar to what the City of Laurel is doing. In this scenario, we want to solicit some numbers where we could possibly get back into the debris business. Whoever we’re getting the numbers from, they would just be concerned about getting the trash up.”
When Ducker was elected to his former seat as Ward 5 Alderman in 2009, trash service in Petal was approximately $20 a month. Shortly thereafter, officials were able to move some funds in the budget to lessen that fee to $17.
When the city privatized the service with WastePro in 2013, the charge went down to $15.25. Currently, trash service runs $18.75 per month.
In January of last year, Ducker said WastePro is actually one of the less expensive contractors that have bid for the city’s trash pickup. Other bids – including three received by the city shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic – have come in that would make the fee $25 or $26 per month.
“They have (done a good job); I’m happy with the work they’ve done for us,” Ducker said. “I know they’ve had some problems out in (Forrest) County, but we’ve had a good relationship with them.
“I think when you go into contracts like this, as we did with privatizing the Public Works Department (with Clearwater Solutions), you have to look at them as partnerships. There’s going to be moments where you have to tell them ‘I really need you to do this,’ and there might be a time when you might have to go in there and help them out as well.”
WastePro picks up trash for approximately 4,000 customers each week in the City of Petal. At 52 weeks a year, that equates to about 52,000 cans per year. Interested parties can submit bids at Petal City Hall, located at 119 West 8th Avenue.
“You’ve got to advertise (these bids) for two consecutive weeks, which we hope will take place starting next week,” Ducker said. “And then it’ll be 15 working days after that – we’ll probably give it a couple of extra days after that, just to give everybody a little more time to put some stuff together.
“So we’re looking at the back end of July, and if everything went right, you’d award the contract at the first meeting of August.”
