Prospect of $4 million a year for trash collection leaves New Kensington seeking new bids

The prospect of paying nearly $4 million a year for curbside trash collection — more than four times what it currently costs — has New Kensington officials holding their noses.

At a special meeting Tuesday, council members rejected a trash collection bid from County Hauling and authorized the city’s clerk to readvertise for other bids.

New Kensington bid its trash collection two different ways, said City Clerk Dennis Scarpiniti.

The first option was for an automated trash collection, where an automated truck arm controlled by the driver picks up the garbage cart and dumps its contents in the truck. The second was for manual curbside trash collection, the way it’s currently done in the city.

For the automated option, County Hauling submitted a $17.7 million bid for a five-year period, Scarpiniti said. The company submitted a $19.9 million bid for a five-year period for the curbside option, he said.

County Hauling — the city’s trash collection contractor — was the only bidder, Scarpiniti said.

“We voted to reject the initial bid we received based on the substantial cost increase and to authorize (the city clerk) to advertise and rebid,” Mayor Tom Guzzo said. “The city will be accepting bids through Nov. 17, at which point we’re confident that we will be able to choose a provider.”

Guzzo and councilmen Corey Pistininzi, Todd Mentecki and Dante Cicconi voted to reject the bid; Timothy DiMaio was absent.

“We’re going to change some of the specs to be more advantageous for haulers to participate,” Scarpiniti said.

New Kensington’s trash day is Friday for the whole city. Scarpiniti said the new advertisement will shift the city to a five-day collection schedule, possibly giving each section of the city a different trash day.

Doing so may get the city more competitive bids, thus lowering costs, he said.

“We bid based on the bid (specification) as written by New Kensington,” said Ro Rozier, spokeswoman for County Hauling. “Our price reflects the (specification) and current market conditions.”

In 2023, New Kensington budgeted $906,300 for trash collection, Scarpiniti said. The quarterly cost for residents is $78.13, which also includes recycling.

Under the five-year bid for curbside collection from County Hauling, the cost to the city would have jumped to almost $4 million per year, based on the nearly $20 million five-year price tag. It is unclear how much residents’ costs would have risen had the bid been accepted.

“We’ll find out what we have to budget when we get the new figures in,” Scarpiniti said.

Scarpiniti planned to advertise the new proposal Wednesday.

“We’re hopeful we’ll get a couple more bids,” he said.

Said Rozier, “With those revised specs, we will be able to bid more competitively.”

Local municipalities typically send garbage contracts out to bid for contractors. But New Kensington isn’t the only local municipality grappling with rising costs of trash collection recently.

Next year, Blawnox residents will see their garbage bills increase by 14% because of a new contract, approved by council in September, with Waste Management.

For an extra trash can in Tarentum, residents will pay a $10 monthly fee, council decided in August.

A contract between Waste Management and Hampton that took effect this year has residents seeing a roughly $30 monthly cost increase and new carts for automated trash disposal.

And although Etna’s fiscal 2023 budget held the line on taxes, residents saw an increase in their garbage fees. That fee jumped from $21.42 per month to $28.01 this year.