As the city of Sedona continues its research into the possibility of a single-hauler residential trash system, input gathered will soon be in the hands of the local haulers vying for that contract.
Sedona City Council held a procurement strategy workshop on May 25 to discuss what it would like to see within a Request for Proposal.

“Once the RFP is developed, we’ll put it out there and we’ll just see what we get from the haulers,” Assistant City Manager Karen Daines said. “At that point, council will have the opportunity to evaluate that and decide whether or not you want to move forward with this at all.

“It may be at that point we decide that the current way is working better than any of the other options. Either way, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision at that point.”

The RFP will allow a competitive selection process providing any hauler an opportunity to submit a proposal and potentially be awarded the citywide contract. Through this process, the city would seek the best value for residents. A hauler would not be selected based solely on lowest bid/lowest pricing. Selection criteria often include cost as well as breadth and quality of services, experience, references and proposed approach. The city may also promote local experience as a selection criterion.

The city’s consultant, Scott Pasternak, conducted meetings in the past two months with each of the local haulers — Patriot, Taylor Waste and Waste Management — as well as with Sedona Recycles to solicit input regarding the development of the RFP document specifically. Their input and perspectives played a role in finalizing the recommendations, the report states.

In regard to recycling, Pasternak asked council whether it was more interested in a program where all residents are enrolled and billed monthly along with their trash service or a subscription service where they have to sign up.

“I’m not in favor of doing this if it’s not citywide,” Councilwoman Jessica Williamson said in regard to recycling. “My whole purpose is sustainability. I want this to be a program that is available to everyone and maybe over the years with education, more people will avail themselves of it. I’m not even sure I want to look at subscriptions.”

Pasternak said there’s no harm asking vendors for costs associated with both. However, it’s been his professional experience that in terms of the quantity of materials, a citywide program is more successful.

As far as opting out of the trash-hauling program entirely, Councilman John Martinez said several residents currently share a trash bin with a neighbor to save costs. He asked if under a single-hauler system residents can opt-out entirely and if so, would that increase the cost to others.

Pasternak said that while it’s not uncommon for people to opt-out seasonally under a one-hauler system, it is rare for people to opt-out entirely. And, depending upon the number of people who chose to opt out, it would increase the cost to other residents.

“We think it’s going to be a relatively small percentage of people that would opt out,” he said. “If someone has trash service now, we expect them to continue to have the service under a citywide contract.”

The overall purpose of the May 25 meeting was to discuss the framework for the RFP document and for council to provide direction. Decisions and/or direction was given in regard to the following:

• Number of service areas or zones
• Bundled vs. unbundled contract for services
• Base services vs. optional additional services
• Optional cart sizes and procurement and ownership of carts
• Collection frequencies for refuse, recycling and bulk waste
• Collection systems under consideration
• Solid waste and dual-stream or curb sort recycling
• Solid waste and single-stream recycling, i.e., all recyclable materials in one container
• Solid waste and recycling drop off
• Mixed waste with recycling processing requirement
• Opt-out options, including temporary vacation holds
• Billing and customer service responsibilities
• Evaluation process criteria, i.e. best value, local experience, etc.

“If we want to make this work, we have to make it as easy as possible for the residents,” Martinez said. “We also have to make it workable for the haulers to accept this.”