Garfield Township seeks contract after trash rate spike

Bill O'Brien, The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Mich.
·3 min read

Mar. 30—TRAVERSE CITY — Garfield Township officials will investigate contracting for residential waste hauling service following a recent spike in trash collection rates from the region's primary hauler.

The township board this week authorized Supervisor Chuck Korn to develop a request for proposals for a five-year residential trash hauling contract, after residential trash collection fees jumped almost 40 percent in the township as of Jan. 1 from GFL Environmental Inc.

The board is expected to review the RFP at its next meeting on April 9 before it seeks competitive bids for the service.

Korn has raised the single-hauler issue with board in the past without much interest. But officials got on board after Garfield residents saw their quarterly trash fees jump from $43 to $60 starting in 2024, part of a regional rate adjustment from GFL that saw area trash fees jump from 20 to 40 percent. Rates for some townships in Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties jumped to as much as $97 per quarter, depending on their locations and pricing histories with GFL. The company is based outside of Toronto and serves more than 2.3 million households across the U.S. and Canada. It serves more than 30,000 residential and commercial customers in northern and mid-Michigan.

At the time GFL officials pointed to several factors fueling the rate hikes, including rising fuel prices, inflationary increases impacting equipment and repair costs, higher employee wages created by labor shortages and higher interest rates impacting the company's operational costs.

Korn noted that Traverse City residents avoided the recent hikes because of contract the city reached with GFL's predecessors, locally-based American Waste, back in 2015 that the city extended through March 2026 before American Waste was acquired by GFL in early 2020. City residents currently pay just over $37 per quarter, which includes recycling collection and a monthly large-item pick-up service.

Korn is hopeful that contracted service will bring stable — and potentially lower — rates for hauling services for township residents, and reduce the township's costs for waste hauling at its parks and trailheads which also went up with the residential rates hikes.

"The rates are pretty brutal on those," he said.

Officials said the contract would only apply to residential trash hauling, and that business owners would continue to be able to secure their own commercial haulers. Board members also said that the contract should include provisions for recycling service and large item pick-up.

"It's not just what you pay a month — it's all those other things," Trustee Chris Barsheff said. "I want to make sure we look at all that."

While GFL is the dominant waste hauler in the region, Korn said he's confident that the township — with the largest municipal population in Grand Traverse County — can create a competitive bidding situation for its residential waste hauling service. National waste hauling giant Waste Management continues to operate in the region, and owns Glen's Landfill in neighboring Leelanau County. It also creates an opportunity for a start-up hauler to break into the Traverse City-area hauling market.

"I would think if there's somebody that's around that wants to move into the market, this would be a great place to start," he said.

Korn acknowledged the township's long relationship with American Waste and former owners Michael and Edward Ascione, where the company built its state of the recycling facility in 2006 along Hughes Drive and has been among the township's largest employers.

"We've had a good relationship with American Waste over the years — but they're not there anymore," Korn said. "You can't really base things on personalities, because they change."