That includes recycling provided weekly instead of every other week. In addition, residents will get the option of 95-gallon, 65-gallon or 35-gallon trash containers for recycling and 95-gallon and 65-gallon containers for trash pickup instead of solely the 95-gallon option for both services.
A charge of $1.50 per month would stay the same for trash bins, as would the ability for residents to have one free recycling container. Additional bins would cost $1.50 per month.
Township trustees at their most recent meeting unanimously approved the three-and-a-half-year deal.
Miami Twp. Trustee Terry Posey Jr. said the switchover to weekly recycling will help township residents.
“We’re three years into (the current Rumpke contract) and I still see recycling bins out on the wrong week just because it’s very challenging to keep track of when that might happen,” Posey said.
Miami Twp. Trustee President John Morris said the contract gives residents those services at about $5 more a quarter for a guaranteed three-year term rather than agreeing to Rumpke’s optional year-long extension, which would have found the community taking chances on a contract in 2021.
“There’s no guarantee that a year from now, we would get different bids and they could be considerably higher,” Morris said.
Ending the contract in the middle of summer and not winter means avoiding a possible repeat of a situation that occurred when Waste Management’s contract expired in the winter and its containers ended up left in front of residents' homes, Morris said.
“Three years ago the weather was just plain terrible and that added to the misery of this can switchover,” he said.
Miami Twp. starting seeking bids on a new contract in August following resident complaints about Rumpke’s service. It received three bids, according to Kyle Hinkelman, the township’s deputy director of community development.
One was Rumpke’s while the other two were deemed “no bids,” Hinkelman said. One was from Republic Services, which sought a five-year contract instead of three-and-a-half. The other was Waste Management, which told township officials the community is not part of the company’s growth strategy, he said.
Rumpke has been “working cooperatively” with the township on a regular basis, and service has improved this past year, spokeswoman Gayane Makaryan told this news outlet Wednesday.
“We believe that going from a bi-weekly to a weekly recycling pick-up schedule will improve the customer experience, while helping the environment,” Makaryan said, noting the added option of smaller carts for residents.
She said residents can write to northwest.market@rumpke.com “to ensure that any service misses or issues are logged and resolved immediately.”
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