Gainesville City Commission moves forward with 20% increase in residential garbage fees

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the December 12 General Policy Committee meeting, a City Commission that barely had a quorum moved forward with increasing residential waste collection rates by 20%. Commissioners also indicated that they preferred continuing with multiple commercial haulers instead of entering into an exclusive contract with a single hauler, as the County has done.

One-month extension of contract with UF that governs bus service

The board first took up a one-month extension of the City’s contract with the University of Florida governing bus service, with Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons (acting for City Manager Cynthia Curry, who was absent) saying the City is “very close, I believe, to settling on a new three-year contract with a revised rate structure,” but with the contract expiring at the end of the month, a one-month extension was needed. Persons said he hopes to bring the full contract to the City Commission at their January 16 meeting. The extension is at the current rate, $84 per service hour, but Persons said UF has agreed that once the contract is successfully ratified, they will retroactively pay the City a new, higher rate. The contract extension passed 4-0, with Commissioners Ed Book, Desmon Duncan-Walker, and Reina Saco absent throughout the meeting.

Ordinance to increase residential garbage cart fees by 20%

The next item was a request from the City Attorney’s office for authorization to advertise an ordinance that would amend the City’s Schedule of Fees by increasing residential garbage cart fees by 20%.

At the August 8 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Commissioners postponed a decision on whether to increase residential cart fees by 25% to shore up the Solid Waste Fund and asked staff to conduct a public relations campaign to inform residents that fee increases are coming and they can reduce the size of their carts to reduce their monthly costs. Commissioners also voted to increase the franchise fee for commercial trash haulers from 10% to 15% of gross revenue. 

Mayor Ward: “This is not an overall General Fund budget issue; this is the Solid Waste Fund.”

As Public Works Director Brian Singleton began giving updates on the topic, Mayor Harvey Ward interrupted to emphasize that the proposed increases will go to balance the budget in the Solid Waste Fund: “This is not an overall General Fund budget issue; this is the Solid Waste Fund.

Updates on City’s Solid Waste Ordinance

Singleton said the ordinance requiring residential multi-family properties to provide a plan for diverting “usable and functioning household goods, furnishings, and electronics” instead of disposing of them when residents move out takes effect in January for complexes with 50 or more units. Singleton said the City is still trying to find businesses that will pick up these materials and take them to other markets when there’s not enough need in the local community. They’re also trying to find grants to construct a warehouse for furniture items left behind by renters who move out.

The City also plans to do “some more targeted education” on food waste next year; Singleton said the City has been “holding back” on enforcement due to the lack of private infrastructure, but there are some new businesses making compost, and at least one hauler is now dedicated to food waste.

Recommended changes to make up deficit in Solid Waste Fund

Singleton reminded the board that “we need to either adjust the fees or reduce the level of service. Our revenues have not kept up with the CPI and inflation.” He said other communities are having similar problems, and some have stopped picking up recycling, increased rates, or made transfers from their General Fund to their Solid Waste Fund. 

Singleton said staff recommends increasing the cart fees and restructuring the franchise fee (based on cubic yards collected instead of gross revenues) and wants the Commission to decide whether to pursue an exclusive hauler agreement in their upcoming solicitation for waste hauling. He said that because the new contract will need to be as cost-effective as possible, staff does not recommend requiring haulers to use 100% electric vehicles, although vehicles will be scored based on their greenhouse emissions.

Pay-as-you-throw program offers different fees for different cart sizes

Public Works Operations Manager Jarod Lloyd explained that the City’s pay-as-you-throw program encourages recycling by decreasing the size of the cart and offers an opportunity for residents to control their waste costs by moving to a smaller cart. There are four sizes: 20 gallons ($20.50/month), 35 gallons ($26.50/month), 64 gallons ($32.75/month), and 96 gallons ($40.75/month). 

Following the City Commission’s August 8 request to inform residents with medium and large carts that they could reduce the size of their cart to reduce costs, 128 residents requested downsizing and 22 residents requested upsizing; Lloyd said that less than 1% of recipients responded to the mailer. There is a $15 charge to change cart sizes.

Lloyd said that in addition to residential curbside collection, the department picks up litter and empties public trash receptacles, enforces the Solid Waste Ordinance, manages City surplus operations, has customer service and public outreach teams, provides food waste collection, and repairs pavement damaged by trash vehicles. He said the customary 5% increase every two years has not kept up with inflation, with costs increasing by almost $3 million since 2019.

Lloyd said staff recommends increasing the cart fees by 20% starting April 1 and possibly restructuring the franchise fee for Fiscal Year 2026.

Ward noted that they would be deciding whether to direct the City Attorney to bring back an ordinance at a future meeting, and “if we did do that, it would be at least two readings… before any final decisions were made.”

Upcoming Waste Hauler Invitation to Negotiate

Lloyd also discussed an upcoming Waste Hauler Invitation to Negotiate (ITN), which could be awarded to one or more haulers. Lloyd said there are benefits to having a single (“exclusive”) hauler, such as the ability to set a uniform price and improve customer service, but because of a settlement reached in a lawsuit regarding a previous ITN, the City could also be on the hook for 18 months of gross receipts ($28.6 million) to the commercial haulers currently working in the city who are not awarded the exclusive contract. The residential market currently has an exclusive hauler, but four haulers currently compete for commercial accounts. 

The City previously issued an ITN in 2021, but the award negotiations were delayed by a lawsuit, which was eventually settled. However, once the lawsuit was settled, the negotiations team determined that it wasn’t feasible to meet the contract requirement of 100% electric vehicles within three years, so the negotiations were terminated. As a result, Lloyd said, the ITN that will be issued in 2025 would “leave our fuel types open; instead of just locking them down to one fuel source, we would like to see what everybody has to offer… We want to create a rubric and score the fuel types based off of the emissions.”

Staff recommendation

Staff recommended that the Commission advertise an ordinance to amend the City’s schedule of fees to increase the residential garbage cart fees by 20%, hear feedback from the solid waste haulers attending the meeting, provide direction on whether to pursue an exclusive hauler (staff recommended against pursuing an exclusive hauler), and consider a restructuring of the franchise fee for commercial haulers for Fiscal Year 2026. 

Waste haulers speak

Ward then invited representatives from the waste haulers to speak. Ralph DeMeo from Florida Express Waste and Recycling said he supported staff’s recommendation to not pursue an exclusive contract. The company, which is based in Ocala, has been working in Gainesville since the 1970s and has hundreds of commercial customers in the area. He said the company told the City three years ago that “the EV was a non-starter,” and that was the principal driver behind the lawsuit that led to the current ITN “because [the industry] couldn’t meet that specific criteria… [We are] not ready for that yet.”

Bill Brinkley, the General Manager for Republic Services in North Florida, also supported a competitive market for commercial services but said he thought an exclusive contract for the 28,000 residential properties (as is currently the case in Gainesville) was “a good thing.” He said his company has committed to half of its fleet being electric by 2030, “but we have to do that in an intelligent way… These electric vehicles get 80 to 90 miles per charge, and a lot of our routes are a lot larger than that.”

Dayna Williams, an Alachua City Commissioner who is also the Director of Government Affairs for North Florida for WastePro, also supported staff’s recommendation. She said WastePro decided not to bid on the 2021 ITN, and “the electric vehicle requirement was a main reason why… I feel like it’s still in research and development. There are still questions about how to dispose of the batteries that run the vehicles, how to accommodate the fact that the batteries take up so much space in the vehicle.” She said the batteries reduce the amount of garbage that can be collected by one vehicle, so more trucks may need to be on the road.

Williams also cited a news report of an electric car that was left in the garage of residents who evacuated due to an approaching hurricane; when the garage flooded, the car caught fire and burned the house down. She said, “That made me think about electric trucks and the safety of them.”

Skip McCall, the Government Contracts Manager at GFL Environmental, also supported competition in the commercial market. He said GFL uses Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as fuel in their trucks, and “also we embrace the EV technology… Unfortunately, you know, commercial EV is not there yet, but I can tell you, our corporate folks are looking at that each and every day with the manufacturers.”

Willits: “I think the fears about electric vehicles, the danger – I really believe it’s fear-mongering.”

Commissioner Casey Willits said he was disappointed that they could not award an exclusive contract that could reduce “the wear and tear on roads… It’s sad that… the companies that want to do business with the City, their business model is… highly destructive on roads… As far as cart rates, I’m glad this is not the 25%, it was too much in one year… I prefer 15%… It will hurt people, and it’s kind of a sudden shock… Residential has been getting a deal. We really shielded them during the pandemic from going in and doing this market-rate adjustment… I’m not happy that… we’ve got to do it all at once with 20%, as opposed to having kind of stayed on top of it.”

Willits said, though, that “there are some options. The charts show that if everyone besides [those who have] the smallest cart, if they all go down one [size], their bill for the month stays the same.”

With more intensity, Willits said, “I think the fears about electric vehicles, the danger – I really believe it’s fear-mongering. In 2017, there were 107 fatalities and 1,400 injuries from garbage truck crashes, according to FMCSA… We in our city have had a death from a waste truck. And so I just think the EV concerns are blown up… because… people don’t want a system change that they’re very used to.”

He said he had expressed concerns about electric bike fires in high-rise apartment complexes by advocating for their storage in a concrete room at the bottom of the structure, but “I just really want to say that I think it’s absolute fear-mongering. Science is changing very rapidly. The industry is changing… I just have to rebut  the fear-mongering about it, as opposed to the vast potential we have to consume fuels that hopefully are generated right here in the city of Gainesville, either through biomass or through solar… and we don’t have to buy any oil from anybody else.”

Chestnut: “I wish we could go to 25% because that’s what we really, really need.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said she liked “the diversity of choice” with multiple haulers and keeping jobs in the community. She continued, “I like the restructuring of the franchise fee, the raising the garbage cart fees 20% – I wish we could go to 25% because that’s what we really, really need.”

Motion

Chestnut made a motion to allow multiple commercial haulers, restructure the franchise fee, and raise cart fees by 20%. Commissioner Bryan Eastman seconded the motion but clarified that the request was just to review options for restructuring the franchise fee. 

Singleton said staff’s recommendation was for the Commission to direct staff to do more research and bring back more information on restructuring the franchise fee by tying it to volume instead of revenue. He also clarified that staff intended to release the ITN in the first quarter of 2025 and bring back the franchise fee options sometime next year as a separate item.

Eastman said he would also like staff to review ways the City could use franchise fees or other methods to get some of the benefits of having a single hauler.

Singleton said he was interpreting the motion as bringing back an ordinance to increase cart fees by 20%, issuing the ITN without an exclusive commercial hauler option, and bringing back options for restructuring the franchise fee at a later date, along with options to incorporate some of the exclusive hauler benefits into the ordinance. Chestnut and Eastman agreed.

Ward: “You take the garbage to the curbside once a week, and miraculously, 28,000 of those garbage cans get emptied every week… That is nothing short of miraculous.”

Ward said, “Living together closely in cities requires three things to consider it modern civilization. You want to be able to bring fresh water into your home at any time. You want to be able to get the dirty water out of your home any time. And you want to be able to take all the things that are no longer necessary to you out of your home and off your property, and that’s what we’re talking about today… You take the garbage to the curbside once a week, and miraculously, 28,000 of those garbage cans get emptied every week… That is nothing short of miraculous, but those are baselines of modern civilization, so I’m thrilled that we’re able to continue to get that done.”

Ward said he supported the motion, then added, “Just off topic a little bit, I have been in two gas-powered vehicles where the engine caught fire, so it is not an EV thing; it’s a vehicle thing. It just happens.”

He continued, “I don’t want to raise fees, ever. It would be great if we never had to do that, but the world around us costs more money, and we have to be responsive.” He asked staff to “try to keep up” in the future with smaller increases.

Clarification of motion

Persons clarified that the intent of the last part of the motion would be “to refer to staff to review legal options that would be more ordinance-based that would maybe try to capture some of the benefits that were described today about the exclusive hauler but not necessarily to review legal options and benefits for an exclusive hauler.” Chestnut and Eastman agreed that was correct.

Singleton also clarified that staff intends to issue the ITN in the first quarter of 2025, but “we do have a lot of work to do to put that together.”

The motion passed 4-0, with Book, Saco, and Duncan-Walker absent.

Ward again noted that the motion directs the City Attorney’s office and staff to bring back ordinances, and there will be two readings of the ordinances before they go into effect.