Covington expected to switch trash collection to Rumpke in July, clearing way for recycling as well

By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune Senior Reporter

The City of Covington is expected to switch trash collection firms on July 1 and approve a new franchise agreement with Rumpke Waste and Recycling that will clear the way for the company to handle all residential and commercial trash collection and recycling in the city.

Residential collection rates that were set at $75 for the first six months of this year will be identical for the second half of the year and the first half of 2016 if the plan moves ahead as the staff has recommended, said acting city solicitor J. Christian Dennery.

If the agreement is approved by the city commission at its April 14 meeting, Rumpke will deliver new trash-collection and recycling carts late in June and begin collecting throughout the city July 1. The ordinance to sign a new agreement was presented to the commission for a required first reading March 31.

The new contract will cost about $11.5 million over five years or an average of roughly $2.3 million per year, according to the city’s analysis. The current contract is costing Covington about $10.9 million over five years, the analysis shows.

The staff report concludes that the intangible “added value” of the new agreement is nearly $3.3 million over the life of the contract. New trash toters, new public receptacles and a fresh emphasis on recycling are components of the “added value” that the staff listed in a report that compared the existing contract with the new proposal.

“Value is added to the image of the city and the sense that Covington is being revitalized and is open to business,” said Dennery, who acknowledged that the “added value” determination is, to a large degree, purely subjective.

“It’s a huge deal—a massive deal that’s going to have an impact on everyone in the city. It affects us week-to-week, citizens, businesses, everyone,” said Dennery, the primary author of the agreement and one of the staffers who prepared the analysis of the bid.

Dennery said Rumpke’s bid was the lowest of the three that were submitted by the Feb. 13 deadline. He said the company’s bid for residential waste service – the largest single element of its proposal – was less than half of what two competitors included in their bids.

But Rumpke’s bid skyrockets for recycling service, which the company emphasized in its bid, said Dennery, who added that recycling also has become a priority for the city.

The other bidders were Republic Services, which acquired CSI, which had signed the current agreement with the city, and Best Way Disposal Services, which has a long list of customers and locations in Indiana and Michigan.

The city’s waste disposal contract with what is now Republic will expire April 30 and was extended for two months so that the winning bidder would have time to prepare for handling the work on July 1, said Sheila Fields, the city’s solid waste and recycling coordinator.

Seventy-five miles south, Republic has been embroiled in a disagreement with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government which voted last month to replace Republic as its waste collection firm after 20 years.

Republic operates Covington’s compaction and transfer station on Boron Drive in Latonia under a separate agreement with the city, which intends to seek bids for that contract in the near future, Fields said.

She said the city makes a small amount of money through its agreement with Republic. “We have an opportunity and we want to take full advantage of it,” said Fields, who added that continued operation of the facility is not a certainty at this point.

Garbage trucks from Republic and other haulers dump their loads at the facility, where it is compressed into smaller bundles and then trucked away to landfills.

Trash collection was handled by city employees until 1975, when Rumpke became the first company to handle the service on a contract basis, Fields said.

Although comprehensive city records were not immediately available, Fields said she believes Rumpke handled the service until 1992, when CSI was hired to take over from Rumpke. CSI/Republic have handled trash collection since then, she said.

Fields stressed that she could not be certain about which companies had worked with the city because she did not have easy access to city records that are stored in the basement of city hall.

She also said Rumpke didn’t have information immediately available about when it handled the service for Covington. But she said the company sent her an e-mail that said, in part, that “…Todd Rumpke personally ran routes in Covington during a portion of the time period… and is excited that the opportunity to manage the contract once again has come full circle.”

Todd Rumpke is now the regional vice president for the southeast market for the family-owned company that is headquartered in Colerain Township, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati.

The new agreement slashes the amount the city pays for residential collection from $9.8 million to $5.5 million – a savings of about $4.3 million over the five-year length of the contract. But the cost of recycling increases tenfold to more than $2.3 million per year. Dennery said $125,000 will be set aside to market recycling, which has not been embraced by many Covington residents.

Part of this equation is based on the premise that more recycling means less trash collection, in effect disposing of items in a different container.

Rumpke also said that a major part of the $11.5 million cost over five years will be its investment of more than $2.6 million for new carts for garbage and recycling.

The new waste fee of $150 per year is a little more than 22 percent higher than the $122.50 Covington homeowners paid last year. Dennery said the city was forced to subsidize the service in the past because the $122.50 did not cover the cost of the service.

Dennery said the city of about 40,000 people has 19,799 “waste units,” which are, in effect, trash collection pickup locations. Of those, 18,517 are residential locations, a figure that includes nearly 1,300 stops that are multi-unit residential buildings that have more than four dwelling units. The city also has 1,282 commercial pickup locations, Dennery said.

The new agreement – like the current contract with Republic — gives Rumpke the right to handle all of the business trash collection in the city. The new agreement also designates Rumpke as the company that will provide dumpsters for construction waste and for large-scale recycling.

Dennery said he does not foresee any problems with businesses in Covington who might have existing agreements with other trash haulers. “We’re not giving them a monopoly to gouge people,” Dennery said. “A lot of the agreements are simple. You pay – we pick up. You don’t pay – we don’t pick up.”

The City of Florence contracts with Rumpke to handle trash collection and recycling. The city’s website says a large trash toter (96-gallon capacity) like the ones used in Covington are picked up once a week for $3.98 a month while a smaller recycling toter (65 gallons) are emptied once a week for a monthly fee of $3.98. A homeowner with that level of service would pay about $96 a year.

The City of Newport has its own trash collection crews who pick up twice a week, according to the city’s website. The fee for the service — $210 for a single family home — is included on the city tax bill. Newport residents who want to recycle may call Rumpke, which will pick up once a week for $5.38 per month or a little more than $60 per year, a Rumpke customer service representative said.

The City of Independence contracts with Rumpke to handle waste collection. Once a week pickup of a trash container and a recycling container costs residents $12.44 per month or about $150 per year.

“I don’t receive complaints on a daily or weekly basis about them,” said Chris Moriconi, the city administrator. “Overall, I think they’ve done a good job for the city.”