After opening three bids from companies regarding trash service in the City of Petal, the Petal Board of Aldermen has agreed to enter discussions with current contractor Wastepro to extend its contract for that service.
The bids were opened at an August 12 special-called board meeting, where aldermen picked Wastepro as the best and lowest bidder. Negotiations with that company are expected to begin next week.
“They just ended up scoring better (than the other two companies),” Mayor Tony Ducker said. “’We’re obviously heavily leaning towards price, and this was going to be the least expensive amount, going with (Wastepro).”
During the discussions, Ducker and Ward 5 Alderman Drew Brickson – who are members of a recommendation team on the matter, along with City Clerk Melissa Martin – will negotiate a contract, which will be placed before the board of aldermen for a vote in the near future.
The prices on the bids are based on approximately 4,000 trash customers per month in the city. Some companies bid on the trash service with debris pickup, while some bid without that service.
“We knew that there’s a lot of price pressure right now in that industry, so we basically tried to throw the kitchen sink to get the numbers as competitive as we could,” Ducker said. “Technically, we’re paying for the disposal anyway; we’re just paying it currently through Wastepro.
“Any business will charge you a little bit, obviously, for that service. So one of the ideas was to see if that would help us out, and we may end up there, but I’m not sure if we will when it’s all said and done.”
The bids on the service – which were submitted by Wastepro, Clearwater Solutions and Waste Management – are follows.
Wastepro
Wastepro bid $29.16 per month with debris disposal using a rear-loading truck and $27.80 with debris disposal using an automated side load truck. Without debris removal, the company bid $19.50 per month with a RL truck and $18.22 per month with an ASL truck.
For debris removal only, the company bid $13.33 per month.
Under Wastepro, an extra trash can would cost $8.75 per month without debris disposal and $9 per month with debris disposal.
Waste Management
Waste Management bid $26.84 per month without debris disposal with an ASL truck and $29.95 per month with debris disposal with an ASL truck.
The company also bid $185 per month for the Parks and Recreation Department, $565 per month for the Street Department, $185 per month for Petal Civic Center. An extra trash can would cost $17.45 per month without debris disposal and $19.47 per month with debris disposal.
Clearwater Solutions
Clearwater bid $36,000 annually for debris pickup only. The company did not submit bid for the other aforementioned services.
City officials began to send out Requests for Proposals for trash service in June, as the current contract with Wastepro is set to expire on September 30. The RFPs allowed other companies, including Wastepro, 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,” Ducker said in a previous story. “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, with a four-year extension with maybe some one-years00 (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.”
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.
The minimum fees for those services are currently $13.25 for water, $18.75 for trash, $33 for sewer and $12 for sewer treatment.
