Council seeks RFPs for private garbage service

At the October 19 Thermopolis Town Council meeting, in citizen participation, the council voted to approve the golf course minutes. Also, town engineer Anthony Barnett presented the town shop roof replacement estimate change order in the amount of $2,744.25. The council voted and passed to accept the change order. 

Mayor Mike Chimenti asked town attorney Mike Messenger if he had anything to report. Messenger said they should proceed with action based upon the earlier work session about waste management. 

The council then voted and passed to create a Request For Proposal from private contractors for garbage pickup for the next three years with the add-ons of resident roll-offs and large waste pick-up. The legal language and parameters will be determined by Messenger and town engineer Heath Overfield. 

Council member Dusty Lewis reported that they are planning a new ice skating structure that is coming from a grant with the State Park. It should be set up approximately in November.

Interim Police Chief Pat Cornwell reported that they received a grant of $88,000 for transition to E-Force, which is a system officers use in the field and at the station to type reports. It will be up and running in about four to five months.

Work session prior to meeting

The Thermopolis Town Council and city employees held a work session on October 19 to discuss waste management. There was much back and forth in comments from a wide variety of people. Many expressed their frustration with the abuse of trash and dumping and they explored possible solutions to the complicated matter. 

Some examples of this are people leaving large waste items next to the dumpsters instead of hauling them to the landfill themselves. One location of many comments was the formerly placed dumpster on 14th Street next to Candy Jack Park. People were continually dumping stoves, mattresses and other large items there. This ultimately led to the removal of the dumpster there.

Another item of discussion was about rollouts. Some who were for their use cited that many new residents have come from other towns or cities that already use them and have no issue with the rollouts. Others are concerned about large families that would need more than one and would have to pay for the extra bins. But other elderly customers would not fill a single rollout bin as fast. There is a major disparity of use depending upon the customer’s situation. Other objections noted was that rollouts do not work on hills. This was previously attempted on Cedar Ridge Drive and was unsuccessful. The bins would roll down the slope and spill trash. 

Another item of concern was the issue of human behavior such as “laziness” and “abuse without penalty.” Council member Bill Malloy mentioned that the town has had a history of not enforcing ordinances and they need to “put some teeth” on them. Many town employees noted continual negative feedback from people, including threats of violence. 

The landfill will be closing in a few years and then will probably come to the transition to the planned transfer station. The timeline of the transition is narrowing and the Town is trying to make some action decisions. Ultimately, the costs will come down to the town residents, but the shape or form of what that looks like is about to be determined. The costs will go up.

One option of discussion is the use of hiring a private contractor to handle waste management. Participants in the work session relayed that private businesses do a better and cheaper job of handling things than the government.  

Heath Overfield provided a summary of the matter and said, “I think it’s kind of worth going back to where this whole discussion started. And that was several years ago with Mayor Mortimore. We were talking about: what was going to happen five, ten years from now when our landfills closed? And our garbage has to go somewhere out of the county, either to a transfer station or direct haul to Worland or whatever. It has to leave this town, the county and go somewhere else.”

“At that point, everybody in the county is going to be paying for that garbage to go out of county. And we had that discussion, it led us to talk about how, well if the people in the county will have to pay, then they’re going to be more people bring them into town, dumping them in the town dumpsters because there’s no oversight and there’s no regulation of people using them. Which led to a discussion about, well, one of the ways to get around that is to have individual rollouts, whereas everybody in the residential area has their own 96 gallons or two 96 gallon containers that they put out on the street once or twice a week. That way, they’re protected. They’re in their garage. People driving through town or coming into town don’t have access to the dumpster in the alley on a random block out in the residential area 24 hours a day.”

“That led to another question: well, what do we do about all the commercial areas and the downtown businesses that can’t do rollouts? Which led to a discussion of how they do make larger three-yard containers that have locking lids either with a key or combination.” 

“So that led down another rabbit hole, or we talked about buying larger dumpsters for the commercial areas. But, you know, certain people had access to on certain blocks. So this whole discussion about ‘we’re moving to rollouts’ started with the initial thought of what are we going to do down the road when everybody’s garbage has to leave the county?” 

“At least in my opinion, I haven’t been in all the discussions around this building, but it was never we need to make a change, so this is what we need to change to. It was more of how are we going to control costs to the town users? And one of the ways to control the cost of the town users is not to let the whole county use the town’s dumpsters.”

“With that said, you’re going to pay more one way or the other. If you continue to use the large dumpsters in the alley, you’re going to have the people that are abusing the system and you’re going to probably get to a point. Like I said, when the landfill closes, you’re going to get to a point where so many people are using the system and abusing it that you’re going to have more enforcement costs, both with law enforcement and with the court system trying to force people not to be using your system in town that don’t live in town. So even staying with large dumpsters, you’re going to have an increase in costs.”

“It’s just a matter of figuring out which is the best fit for you guys or if you’re going to go to private haul, what’s the best fit for the contractor to manage those costs and manage those problems?… At least in my discussions with anybody here, we haven’t been suggesting that’s the direction to go. It has just been that’s one option to mitigate some of these other things that we see coming.”

A positive success story, the discussion noted, was the use of large rollouts that were placed in certain spots a couple of times a year. There was much activity and use of them. This led to a discussion of using them more often.

There was also a discussion of the need to purchase a new garbage truck. There is an approximate 18 months wait to finally receive the new vehicle and this comes close to the transition time of landfill closing and the transfer station. 

At the end of the work session, Mayor Mike Chimenti asked that during the official Town Council meeting there would be action to take. One data point that was unknown during the work session was: what is the cost for a private contractor to handle the waste management?