Some residents in the City of Petal will see a slight increase on their garbage bill, as the Petal Board of Aldermen recently approved a $2-per-month increase for customers who receive only that service from the city.
Mayor Tony Ducker said the increase will only apply to customers, for example, who receive some of their services from utilities such as Barrontown Water Association and Sunrise Utility Association, rather than receiving all their utility services from the City of Petal.
“If you pay water, sewer and trash (to the city), you’ll see no increase in your bill,” Ducker said. “Basically, we were able to knock a couple dollars off of the sewer treatment, and we ended up adding it to the trash to offset the trash increase, if you just pay trash (to the city).
“That would be very few people who happen be on Barrontown on Sunrise, and aren’t on our sewer system.”
What is commonly known as Petal’s “water bill” features four services: water, garbage, sewer service and sewer treatment. Of those four charges, sewer service is the most expensive.
The bills feature a minimum water charge of $13.25 for 0 to 2,000 gallons of water used. There is a $6 charge for each additional 1,000 gallons used; if over 50,000 gallons are used, that fee drops to $5 per 1,000 gallons.
If more than 100,000 gallons of water are used, the fee drops to $4.50 per 1,000 gallons.
Sewer service is a $33 flat fee, sewer treatment is a $12 flat fee and garbage service is an $18.75 flat fee, for a total minimum amount of $77.
Under the new plan, which will take place early next month, residents who pay only trash will see that bill go from $18.75 to $20.75.
“Then we did do an increase on the extra (garbage) can – that went up a couple of bucks with this,” Ducker said. “We had been charging $9; that was the actual rate that we were going to owe (provider) WastePro, so you have to have somewhat of a spread between the two numbers, due to us having to do the collection part of it.”
Sewer treatment is handled by the City of Hattiesburg at its south wastewater lagoons; that fee is charged to Petal residents.
In August, aldermen decided to extend the city’s contract with WastePro to fulfill trash service. The city privatized with that WastePro in 2013; since then, that company has provided all trash services within the city limits, taking that service over from the city’s Public Works Department.
“A lot of this (increase) was on the debris side; the increase in the rate basically,” Ducker said. “The last (trash) contract was about $18, and you’re looking at around $29 now for trash pickup.
“Now, we’re getting an extra (garbage) truck out of that, so that was some of the increase, but some of it was just the cost of doing business. And there’s not a lot of competition in that line of work; we had just one other proposal on the Request for Proposals, and it was a good bit higher than that.”
