Refuse and recycling updates

This week, the Common Council approved a new refuse and recycling collection contract with Waste Management. The new contract goes in to effect in December and runs through the end of 2016.

We'll still have the feature that seems to be the favorite among City of Verona residents: unlimited garbage collection. With the exception of certain regulated items (like electronics waste), you can still place however much of whatever you want at the curb and it'll get hauled away.

Three things will change:

1) The current City of Verona recommended budget calls for the refuse and recycling line item on our property tax bills to increase from $150 per year to $160. Some contractors don't even offer an unlimited rate anymore, and the ones that do need to charge more for it due to disposal cost increases. All of us on the Council seem to feel that the strong popularity of the unlimited refuse collection justifies this $10 per year increase.

2) Recycling will go to an automated every-other-week collection. Waste Management will provide each household with a 96-gallon recycling cart along with a calendar showing the dates it'll be collected. I lived in Madison when they went to this system and it seemed to work quite well once everyone got used to it. This system saves a lot of money and contributes to keeping the aforementioned cost increase down to $10 per year.

3) Waste Management will provide a once-per-year no-charge electronics waste drop-off event. It'll be held at our Public Works facility. Dane County already puts on a county-wide e-waste drop-off event early in summer, so we're thinking that ours will happen in the fall. If you can't hold on to your e-waste until one of those events, you can still pay a fee to drop it at our Public Works facility year-round or a company like File 13 will take it off your hands at a per-pound rate.

Those are the major features of the new refuse and recycling contract that will begin in December. I feel that these services and costs are a good trade off and will work well for the City of Verona's residents.