After just 16 minutes of discussion, the Sedona City Council unanimously approve a Request For Proposal and contract documents from private haulers to provide a citywide, city-managed residential trash and recycling program.

The vote came at the Tuesday, July 12, council meeting. The city’s three commercial trash haulers — Patriot, Taylor Waste and Waste Management — will now have an opportunity to submit the RFP by the end of September.

Staff will review the proposals and make a presentation at which time council will determine whether to approve a contract for a single-hauler system.

“Staff will put together a matrix to make heads or trails of the proposals because it is a somewhat complicated and exhaustive RFP with a lot of different service options,” Assistant City Manager Karen Osburn said. “We’ll bring something back to council where you can see what the cost benefits are, what the values may be and make a judgement call on whether or not a consolidated, single-hauler program is the best option for Sedona.”

Now that council has approved the RFP contract document, it will soon be placed on the city’s website along with survey results that showed an overwhelming majority of respondents opposed to a single-hauler system.

During the procurement strategy session when creating the RFP, by majority consensus, council directed staff to:

• Request pricing and a description from vendors for all three types of services — the single stream, dual stream and curbside with the sorting done by the hauler.
• Ask vendors to describe the environmental impact of their services.
• Add a statement that “it is preferred to have the collection of the refuse and recycled materials done for customers on the same day.”
• Add glass to the minimum materials accepted list.
• Remove the recommendation “Vendors to identify whether vehicles will be diesel or CNG [compressed natural gas] vehicles.”

The city has stressed from the beginning that just because it’s requesting an RFP from the vendors, that does not automatically mean that going to a single-hauler system is a done deal.

“Just issuing the RFP does not obligate the city to select a vendor or go with the single-hauler model,” Osburn said earlier this month.

“But by having actual proposals, the City Council will be able to evaluate the merits of the various pricing and service options and then make a more informed decision as to whether or not the terms being proposed are attractive enough to move forward with consolidating services.

“Council may explore all of the proposals and determine that it is not in the best interest of the community to consolidate and they may choose to keep the current system as is.”