After absorbing costs from a rate increase from our contracted vendor for the past year, the City of Alpharetta will begin passing the cost on to its residential waste and recycling collection customers beginning with the upcoming billing cycle. The $5 per month increase will be seen by most customers in the bills that will be mailed the week of May 23, while customers on a special discounted rate plan for seniors would see a smaller increase.
The new monthly rates will be as follows:
Current Monthly Rate Effective
Rate July 1, 2022
95-Gallon Trash Cart $ 25.65 $30.65
68-Gallon Trash Cart $ 24.28 $ 28.93
Senior Rate $ 13.29 $ 15.91
Senior Exempt Rate $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Extra 95/68-Gallon Cart $ 7.72 $ 9.40
Extra 18-Gallon Bin $ 3.44 $ 4.19
During the March 7 meeting of the Alpharetta City Council, the City’s finance director explained that Republic Services had instituted a 25% rate increase last year, but the City chose to absorb much of it so that residents incurred only a 10% increase.
Historically, we have been fortunate in that Republic Services had not increased our rates for the 10 previous years of their contract, and our rates were below the going market rates. Like many businesses, however, they have seen their fuel costs, labor costs, and other costs go up year over year, and those pressures finally put Republic into a position of having to raise our rates last year.
After receiving the 2021 rate increase the City competitively bid the waste and recycling contract to ensure that Republic’s rates were reflective of the market and the best deal was being received for the services provided. That process resulted in City Council voting in August 2021 to award a new contract to Republic Services, which had submitted a proposal that was $1.35 million lower than the next closest bidder. Still, the proposal reflected an additional increase of 4%.
Over the past year we have absorbed part of the cost from these rate increases rather than passing them on to our residents. We did that by leveraging a balance in our solid waste fund that had been built over several years, but those funds have been used up. Subsidizing the rate increase was always a temporary measure while we went out to the market to see if we could get lower rates through the bid process.