The City of Jacksonville is working on two separate issues when it comes to recycling, as well as a citywide contract for a garbage service.
City Clerk Skip Bradshaw says that the city is currently working on an agreement with BLH Computers for the disposal of surplus computer monitors and televisions by the city’s residents: “This contract is so that people can take their TVs [that break down] as they need to rather than storing them until June when we have the citywide clean up. That way they can take them directly to BLH, and then, on a monthly basis the city will get an invoice that will tell us the address of the people who have recycled their TV or computer monitor. It won’t give us their names, but it will give us an address and what they turned in. Then, the city pays for that on a monthly basis.”
The city was billed $19,000 during this year’s citywide cleanup just for the disposal of old televisions and computer monitors, with the majority of the bill going towards fuel costs and manpower for the tv recycling program. The hope is with the TV/Monitor Recycling Program under direct management by BLH that it will eliminate or reduce most of those costs, causing billing to the city to go down.
Ward Two Alderwoman Lori Large-Oldenettel noted during the July 25th City Council meeting that by having the year-long drop off agreement, people would no longer have to clutter up their residence with the junk TVs and/or computer monitors. She also said it would reduce the risk of fly dumping around the city’s outskirts.
Bradshaw says there are some rules to the TV/Monitor recycling program. Residents will only be allowed to turn in two TVs/monitors per year per household: “This year will be a little bit different. Residents will still be allowed to turn in 2 from now until the end of the year. Then, they will have 2 for all of next year – 2023. The program is for Jacksonville residents only.”
Bradshaw says that the new TV/Monitor recycling program coincides with the city attempting to extend its current recycling program for normal recycling products like paper, plastics, and aluminum. The current recycling contract ends on August 31st. The extension will come with a 4% increase in costs with the hope that the recycling contract and the new waste hauling contract will be with the same provider. The City Council is expected to vote on both proposals, including a new waste hauler city contract at their upcoming meetings in the month of August.
Bradshaw says he has requested Request For Proposal (RFP)/ Request For Quote (RFQ) from the cities of Morton, Rantoul, and Washington to compare and work on a contract for Jacksonville: “Basically we wanted to take a look at the contracts that they had to kind of see what we wanted to do. The main thing that we wanted to do is to take a look at their RFP. We wanted to see what they put in there RFP and how they worded it so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can take what they’ve done and make our own. I’ve received two of them as of Tuesday so we’ve got those to review. Then we can put our own RFP together and hopefully have it ready before the next City Council meeting.”
Bradshaw says the goal of having a citywide contract is to lower citizens’ bills. Trash service has been a controversial topic since GFL took over Area Waste Management and then Trash Queen in recent months. Bradshaw says that normal trash pick up service has somewhat returned to normalcy in Jacksonville, but billing has been the main complaint that city officials have been hearing about from people across the city. Bradshaw says with the city contract, it would streamline billing for GFL and hopefully level prices for everyone citywide and possibly make them lower.