Rate Increase Likely For Waste, Recycling In Alpharetta

ALPHARETTA, GA — After absorbing costs from a rate increase from its contracted vendor for the past year, the City of Alpharetta is poised to pass the cost on to its residential waste and recycling collection customers later this year. The $5 per month increase would be seen by most customers beginning July 1, while customers on a special discounted rate plan for seniors would see a smaller increase.

The new monthly rates will be as follows:

The new rates would be reflected in the billing that customers receive on or about June 1, as billing is done for the upcoming service period.

During the March 7 meeting of the Alpharetta City Council, the city’s finance director explained that Republic Services had instituted a 25 percent rate increase last year, but the city chose to absorb much of it so that residents incurred only a 10 percent 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,” he said. “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, city council directed Harris to competitively bid the city’s 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 percent.

“Over the past year, we have absorbed part of the cost from these rate increases rather than passing them on to our residents,” Mayor Jim Gilvin said. “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.”