Skyrocketing trash collection costs have Clifton eyeing once-a-week pickup, robotic trucks

CLIFTON — In the face of major trash disposal cost increases, city officials are looking at all cost-reducing strategies, including once-a-week pickups.

Costs may possibly double, or more, officials said, so how trash is picked up and discarded is all up for review.

“It’s a bad situation,” the city’s recycling and solid waste removal consultant, Wayne DeFeo, told members of the City Council last week.

Under consideration to cut costs is reducing curbside pickup from twice to once a week and possibly increasing the size of trash containers to ones that hold 95 gallons and have wheels specifically designed to work with garbage trucks with robotic arms.

The robotic arm trucks, DeFeo said, might help get lower bids from contractors, as it would cut back on employees.

Gas and labor costs are high and the pool of willing workers is low, he said.

Robotic arm trucks have a number of advantages, De Feo said, including requiring fewer workers. The current trucks require three employees at a time, a driver and two to load the garbage. By using the semiautomatic method, the city could reduce the number of employees per truck to one. It would also help bring down the number of workers' compensation complaints due to injuries.

"The average claim costs a company $150,000," DeFeo told the council. "Eight of them and it costs the company $1 million."

He said other municipalities in New Jersey have already switched to the new automated trucks, including Atlantic City, Middletown and some beach towns. He said municipalities in the state's northeast, however, have lagged behind in making the switch.

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Staying the current course may increase costs by up to 150%, Clifton officials said. City Manager Nick Villano said his goal is to keep the increase closer to 50%, so he will look into the truck switch option.

The city currently pays about $5 million annually to a contractor for twice-weekly trash pickups. Employees of the Department of Public Works collect the recycling.

A 50% increase would mean an additional $2.5 million, or a tax increase of about $68 for the average assessed home of $170,000.

That, Mayor Jim Anzaldi said, would be hard on the taxpayers, but not doing anything would be worse.

"It looks like the cost of the future garbage contracts might be outrageous, so bidding on a number of different scenarios is important," Anzaldi said.

To make it work, DeFeo said, the city would have to consider buying new garbage carts for all its residents.

That cost, he estimated, might be about $55 per cart, possibly less if the city buys in bulk. Because the city has mostly on-street parking, robotic arm automatic pickup won't work unless a second employee rolls the carts out far enough for the arm to grab it.

Clifton is not alone in facing trash pickup cost increases.

Totowa, Woodland Park, Butler and Kinnelon still have contracts in place and won't have to negotiate new ones yet. The cities of Passaic and Paterson have done so, and they say increased costs have affected them.

"We just got a six-month extension," Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh said of the city's contract. "Our costs were expected to go up 120%."

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Mayor Hector Lora said Passaic is facing similar increases. Most recently, its recycling costs almost doubled, from $900,000 to $1.6 million. In all, Lora said, the costs for solid waste and recycling doubled this year to a total of $5.8 million.

The problem is statewide, said Lori Buckelew, deputy executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities.

"I just was speaking with a Bergen County town that said they were facing a 200% increase," she said.

Solid waste costs are not exempt from budget caps, Buckelew said. The state may have to allow that exemption or provide additional aid. "Something will have to give," she said.

Meanwhile, Clifton's council approved the measure to follow DeFeo's advice and prepare three bids: one that maintains status quo; one that includes buying garbage carts, twice a week pickups and bulk pickups only on request; and a third that uses the garbage carts but collects only once a week, with bulk pickups on request.

The plan is to advertise in September, get the bids a few weeks later and be able to award a bid before the first of the year.

"If I recall right, the last time we had different bids and one was for two times a week and one time a week, thinking that maybe one time a week it would save money," Anzaldi said. "But if I remember right, the savings was so small that we just stayed with the two times a week."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Clifton NJ eyes once-a-week trash pickup as costs skyrocket