On May 4, 2009, the City Council approved a five year license for Allied Waste to provide solid waste services in the City of Grand Haven.
To clarify a potentially confusing matter, the company was called "Sunset Waste" in 2004 when the last contract was negotiated. Sunset Waste was purchased by Allied Waste, and Allied Waste has now been purchased By Republic. For now we will continue to refer to the company as "Allied" and will change to Republic when the company notifies us that the name change is final.
This is not a contract between the City and the provider, it is a license to allow the company to collect garbage. City subscribers who pay for the service are customers of Allied Waste, but the City maintains constant oversight of the services provided to ensure compliance with license requirements.
The company decided to begin billing at the new rates in late July, 2009, and they billed all customers retroactively to the first of May. There was public discussion about this decision, and the company agreed to not charge "bag" customers the retroactive fees. These customers would be charged the new rate effective September 1, 2009.
All other customers were billed back to May 1 - most are minor changes and City Hall has received little in the way of complaint from these customers.
Bag customers are entitled to use recycling, yard waste and individual bag pick up. The bags are purchased at City Hall for $1.50 each, and these are the only bags Allied will collect from those customers.
Here are the "old rates" and the "new rates" for comparison:
Std Service 9.98 (old) 11.08 (new)
Bag Service 1.50 per bag (old) 1.50 per bag plus $6.25 per month (new)
90 gallon cart 2.13 per month (old) 1.05 per month (new)
90 gallon yard waste 2.00 per month (old) 2.00 per month (new)
Your bills should not be adjusted again until May 1, 2010, according to inflationary figures. Also, there is a fuel surcharge of 10 cents per month if diesel fuel goes over $3 per gallon and then 10 cents for every 50 cent increase in the cost of diesel.
Finally, watch your bills for a realignment planned by the company to get all Grand Haven customers on the same billing cycle. In order to start a new quarter in May of 2010, Allied intends to adjust quarterly bills of all customers to coincide with a new quarter. This means that customers on different quarters will receive bills for one or two months of service leading up to the switch, and will then be on the following quarterly schedule:
May/June/July
August/Sept/October
Nov/Dec/January
Feb/March/April
