PEORIA — Every-other-week recycling could return to the city’s older neighborhoods soon.
City Council members will vote Tuesday on a proposed agreementwith Peoria Disposal Co. to restore the service, which had been changed earlier this year in parts of town where trash is picked up in alleys.
That’s because of a dispute over pickup location for recyclables.
The new agreement will cost an additional $6,198 a month for the city, but that would come out of city coffers this year, and the $18 monthly this year residents are paying for waste collection would not change, city manager Patrick Urich said Thursday afternoon.
Last year, councilors approved a trash-and-recycling contract with PDC that moved from monthly to every-other-week recycling collection — with “curbside” as the specified location for recycling pickup.
But residents in parts of the city’s bluffs and south side who have their trash collected weekly in alleys — and previously had recycled there as well — objected to the change, which often required wrangling a full recycling toter a greater distance.
Some also indicated difficulties given the regular on-street parking in those neighborhoods.
City officials agreed this spring to work at renegotiating the contract, but that meant temporarily returning those with alley trash collection to a once-monthly recycling schedule, to the consternation of many in those parts of the city.
Council members last month approved a brief extension in those talks after Urich said more time was needed to get an accurate count of dwellings in the city getting pickup service.
The total house count, according to data provided to the City Council, is, at 38,800, some 982 homes fewer than was in the original contract, producing $83,470 in savings to the city on per-home pickup costs for the remainder of the year.
That offsets part of the $114,460 increase in costs for PDC to collect recycling in the alleys every other week.
“Overall, I think it’s a good compromise that allows us to utilize the savings from the reduced house count to address the issues of bi-weekly alley pickup,” Urich said.
Returning the entire city to the same service routine appealed to West Bluff Council president Conrad Stinnett, who last month addressed councilors over the issue. But the added cost did not.
“I’m glad the heritage neighborhoods are on track to get the same service as the rest of Peoria,” he said. “I don’t believe an additional dime should be spent by the city to do it. PDC may be well within their rights to demand this extra money, but the bad will they have generated over this issue may well cost them down the line.”
If approved, the every-other-week collections would resume on Aug. 5.