The Newtown Borough Council at its April 7 work session agreed to take the next step toward establishing a single trash hauler system for the borough.
After holding a public hearing on the potential change and soliciting input from residents, council directed its solicitor to begin drafting an amended ordinance to spell out the details.
The borough will also begin drafting a Request for Proposals that will spell out many of the issues raised by borough residents, including cost, collection days, yard waste and bulk item pickup, enforcement, etc.
“This does not automatically mean it’s a done deal,” said Council President Tara Grunde-McLaughlin. “It means we will now take the next step to determine how it will be done and how it will be structured. If we reach a point where we can’t do it the way we want to do it, we still might not make it happen. But it’s a fork in the road.”
Under a single hauler system, the borough would develop a request for proposals, which would spell out the length of the contract and the services expected, including such things as the number of regular trash pickup days per week and whether separate bulk item and yard waste pickups would be included.
The borough has not decided how billing would be done, whether it would be through the borough or directly to residents. Some municipalities bill residents directly, either as a separate quarterly bill or as part of their annual tax bill.
The borough’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC) brought the idea of a single hauler to Council two years ago, raising concern over multiple garbage trucks rumbling through the borough on multiple days and companies consistently operating outside of their designated collection days.
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A recent question from a Newtown Township resident: John, can the township direct private trash haulers to only collect on certain days? In Hill Haven , We have trash cans from various houses sitting at the curb every single day of the week, along with the trucks picking them up every day.
My Answer: Some townships have a single trash service and charge a tax for that. NT does not. I know from my survey that many residents do not want to see another increase in taxes. Some developments/HOAs have negotiated with individual trash companies to be the sole trash company in their development. In our development (Country Bend) that was not possible because we needed 90% of residents to agree - something that would never happen. But we were able to get about 80% of homeowners to agree to sign on to one trash company. It did not eliminate multiple trucks because a few people held out and refused to sign on.
This would be a contentious issue in the Township, which has multiple HOAs to contend with if it should decide to take that fork in the road.