Selectmen Vote to Give CRRA Contract For Trash and Recyclables

The Board of Selectmen voted Wednesday night to authorize a 15-year waste and recycling contract with Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority.

Although the town’s current contract with the quasi-public agency does not expire until next year, selectmen made the decision with data from the Central Connecticut Solid Waste Authority and recommendations from Chief Administrative Officer Robert Skinner.

With the help of the Capital Region Council of Governments, the solid waste authority sent out bids on behalf of member towns and came up with two viable vendors – CRRA and Murphy Road Recycling.

Towns now have the option of going with one or the other or sending recyclables to one and solid waste to the other.

Murphy Road came in with a five-year proposal that contained set prices and increases. Its waste cost in the first year would have been $65 a ton, with increases of up to 3.5 percent each year. For recyclables, Murphy Road would pay $22.50 per ton each of the five years.

CRRA offered several tiered options, with prices that varied by length of contract and other factors. CRRA prices are also market and revenue based.

For trash, CRRA estimates came in lower, ranging from $59.50 to $61.50 a ton for trash in the first year. Estimated trash prices over the subsequent four years are lower.

CRRA also does not guarantee a recycling rebate although in the past several years it has reimbursed the town approximately $5 per ton.

Going to CRRA for trash and Murphy Road for recyclables would provide extra money for recyclables but that option would not necessarily save the town money, Skinner said.

Splitting the services would force the town into going with a three-year trash contract with CRRA, preventing it from getting the best prices for solid waste, Skinner said. The town could also risk its relationship with CRRA, since the agency could chose not to renew a contract in three years if its at capacity, Skinner said. The three-year contract would also require minimum and maximum load caps.

Using a three-year estimate, on paper the town would pay $201,509 by splitting the services and $214,557 by going only with CRRA. However, those numbers do not account for the potential CRRA rebates, which have traditionally been $5,000 per year Skinner said.

Towns do have some influence at CRRA and in the long-run prices at the facility are trending down, creating the potential for long-term savings, Skinner said.

“It would be my recommendation we stick with CRRA and do a tier-one long-term contract,” he said.

“If you did want to split it up there might be – might be – short term gain but there could be long-term loss,” Skinner added.

The town does have the provision of opting out of the contract if prices spun out of control, Skinner added.

First selectmen Richard Barlow said while he has had issues with CRRA, he agreed that it was the better choice. CRRA will pay off much of its debt in 2012, has a new power contract and is going from two contractors to one, all of which will lower its costs, Barlow said.  

“I think in the long term I would agree that CRRA is a better choice,” he said.

Selectman Marc Cerniglia asked if long-term analysis had been done. While the town has comparison numbers for three years and some date for five, Cerniglia asked if the town had done some re-estimation, considered reasonable assumptions and made a side by side comparison for the next 15 years.

It would be a reasonable exercise and is done in the business world all the time, he said.

“We don’t understand what the total cost of ownership is,” he said.

Other selectmen said there are no accurate estimates for that far into the future and Barlow reiterated his point that the CRRA was saving costs and trending downward in its pricing while Murphy Road was increasing.

The town will keep sending its bulky waste to Murphy Road. That would not affect the CRRA contract and the price per ton will actually go down from the current $84 a ton to $80 per ton in the first year.