2023 Bulk Pickup Program On Hold

Historic Price Increase Places Program "On Pause"

After careful consideration, the town regrets to announce that we need to place a “pause” on our plans for the 2023 Bulk Trash Pick Up program.

After many years of delivering this popular service for our residents, the program’s costs have grown to a point where it has just become too expensive in recent years.  This program has increased in cost from $10,000/per year to (with this recent bid) over $200,000 in just 13 years.  Our 2023 bids from the vendors are simply unaffordable.  County Waste’s bid was a whopping $190,000 flat fee with an additional $105/per ton over 550 – we’re typically collecting about 600-to-800 tons.  With expected additional tonnage, the cost to the town would likely exceed $200,000.  Twin Bridges/Advantage (they’re the same company) declined to bid at all. 

Last year (our most expensive year) the program costs us $90,000, the prior to that $92,000.  The town budgeted a reasonable $80,000 in the 2023 budget, but with this bid, the program is at least $120,000 over budget.  That’s simply not affordable and not something the taxpayers can or should support. 

We are committed to run this popular and much needed program for our residents, but we’re also committed to being fiscally responsible and protecting the taxpayer.  We cannot simply accept a bid that is more than twice the previous’ year bid and still be fiscally responsible.  We agree that we are in historic inflationary times, but that does not justify these costs and does not support a bid that is over twice what it cost last year – a 100% increase in one year!  We will continue to seek other ideas to try to run this program that include a possible drop off site for bulk items, perhaps running the program alternating year or seeking new vendors to bid on the program again. 

This decision was not made easily and is not a result of the town’s failing to budget for the program.  We had every intent of running this program and had hoped for a reasonable bid this year.  At this point we cannot be certain that any program will occur in 2023, but we are committed to running some program and we are working on it and we will bring you information as soon as we have something to share.