The Mount Vernon City Council adopted during its April 13 meeting amendments to the city's codified ordinances to make it clear that garbage haulers must pick up recycling at the same frequency as they do trash service
The changes address ongoing confusion about how often recycling should be collected by waste haulers operating in the city. The council said the amendment aims to ensure consistency and clarity for both residents and service providers.
"The legislation we've drafted here makes it clear that recycling is picked up on the same schedule that you pick up trash. It's real simple. If you get weekly trash service, you have to have weekly recycling. If you have bi weekly, it's bi weekly or monthly. It's monthly," Law Director Rob Broeren said. "Just so that we're not imposing some sort of extra mandate on those companies that pick up trash less than weekly."
Broeren also said that as the city inspector took over issuing licenses for trash hauling companies in the city, one of the continual problems has been recycling pickup. The original legislation buried the required frequency of recycling pickup in the definition section instead of the operator sections. Another issue was that some companies don't pick up weekly, instead making bi-weekly or monthly trash pickups. But the way the original ordinance read, they would still have been required to make weekly pickups of recycling. He said the amendment fixes and clarifies the issue.
Safety Service Director Tanner Salyers told council members a meeting was held with waste haulers after contacting every company operating within Mount Vernon. Salyers described parts of this meeting as contentious but said they worked through all issues. Toward its conclusion, he informed haulers they would be required to offer recycling services; one hauler asked how often this needed to occur since written materials were unclear on this point. Salyers said this highlighted potential attempts by haulers to reduce recycling efforts and led him and Broeren to clarify requirements in the amendments.
Council member Dale Miller, who attended the meeting with waste haulers, said he was left with the impression that a few smaller companies may have been trying to skirt rules for competitive reasons. Miller told them his responsibility is looking out for Mount Vernon residents' best interests rather than supporting individual businesses and suggested any competitive edge should be found elsewhere. He added that future discussions might consider moving toward a single source for waste hauling with trucks marked "City of Mount Vernon."
