City negotiating waste deal
Whiteville seeks stronger contract with Waste Management

By NICOLE CARTRETTE

Whiteville City Council took a stand-tough approach to negotiations over the city’s garbage removal contract with Waste Management at Tuesday night’s public hearing on the budget.

Council voted to extend the current contract 60 days until a better fuel rate can be requested and certain provisions in the contract corrected.

In the last two years, fuel rates have increased 75 percent, Chip Dodd of Waste Management told city council.

“Gas is a huge expense in our business,” Dodd said.

Under the current contract that originally belonged to RSI, the city pays no fuel surcharge. After buying out RSI, Waste Management continued to honor RSI’s contract with the city. Despite asking for fuel surcharges on numerous occasions, City Manager Susan Rhodes said she refused to pay the company an additional fee on the basis that it was not in the contract.

The five-year contract has ended and the city now faces fuel rates of $2.80 per gallon at a fluctuating rate.

Council tried to negotiate a lower fuel rate. “I cannot negotiate the gas rate,” Dodd said, agreeing to take the request back to her superiors.

Council Member Robert Leder hinted that he was aware of other municipalities such as Wilmington who had stopped contracting out their garbage collection and were running their own garbage removal operations.

While the contract included a provision to increase fees with increased disposal fees, it did not include a provision to decrease fees if disposal costs went down, City Attorney Carlton Williamson pointed out.

“I think we need to put that in there,” Dodd said, adding it to her list of requests.

Council asked that a requirement that leaves be bagged be removed from the contract. Dodd suggested Waste Management might try a vacuum system .

“I would like to offer that as an option,” she said in response to council members’ complaints that the provision was a burden.

The contract proposes general residential rates increase from $5.77 to $7.77 per customer and yard waste fees increase from $2.97 to $3.97.

While the city has said it could absorb the residential increases without passing it on to the customer and by doing away with recycling, commercial customers will see rate increases.

Commercial customers will see a 31 percent rate increase under the proposal.

Although a final service contract is not yet in place, the expense for all sanitation services is expected to rise from $696,000 to $832,150.