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WILKES-BARRE — While the city is looking into getting out of the trash business, it’s getting ready to make the second lease payment on a brand new garbage truck and resume contract negotiations with the unionized employees who do the dirty work of waste collection.
The next quarterly payment on the 2018 Mack truck is due at the end of the year. In September, the city made its first payment of $10,146, said city Controller Darren Snyder. The 60-month lease/purchase deal has a total cost of $202,936.
There’s no disconnect here, stressed city Administrator Ted Wampole.
“We still have to operate,” Wampole said Friday.
Simultaneously the city is exploring the possibility of privatizing the garbage service as a cost-saving measure. It issued a Request for Proposals on Dec. 1 and set a deadline of Monday for responses. Bids will be opened at 10:30 a.m. that day at City Hall and another round of talks with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 401 that represents Department of Public Works employees also is scheduled.
The city has plenty of information on what it costs to provide waste collection service to the taxpayers. Wampole and others in Mayor Tony George’s administration are waiting to see what the private sector has to offer before taking the next step.
“We don’t know that number,” Wampole said. And don’t expect the city to sign a contract for the service immediately after opening the bids, he cautioned.
It costs Wilkes-Barre more to pick up the trash and recyclables and get rid of them than what it collects in fees for the garbage bags residents must purchase and use.
Even with raising the price of the bags, as the city will do next year, revenues still lag behind the expenses of payroll, health insurance, maintenance and operation of the fleet of approximately 10 garbage packers and landfill tipping fees. It’s not close to break even, and the adviser hired by the city to improve its finances identified waste collection as an area to review.
The PFM Consulting Group LLC of Philadelphia looked at the period of 2010 to 2015 and determined there were annual deficits in excess of $1 million in five of the six years. This year doesn’t look any better, PFM said in a strategic plan for recovery presented to the city in June.
The RFP for garbage pickup grew out of the report. The garbage truck deal happened months earlier. At its Feb 21 public meeting, city council approved a resolution to enter into an agreement with the most qualified bank to finance the lease purchase of the vehicle and 25-cubic-yard garbage compactor listed at $188,364. The city would buy the garbage packer through the state’s cooperative purchasing program COSTARS and pay for it out of the 2017 general fund budget.