Scott Johnson

Montgomery Advertiser

Montgomery residents could be paying more for garbage collection soon as part of Mayor Todd Strange's proposed 2015 budget.

An ordinance the Montgomery City Council will vote on Tuesday would raise the monthly collection fee from $20 to $25 a month for residential households and from $24 to $40 for businesses.

The increases are expected to add about $3 million to the city's coffers in the 2015 budget year.

Strange said the increases are needed to cover the actual cost of running the sanitation department and the city's landfill.

Most of the increase in costs is due to modifications at the landfill that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has informed the city it needs to complete, he said.

The city has known the modifications were needed for a while, Strange said.

The idea is for the sanitation department and landfill to be capable of sustaining themselves instead of finding help from other parts of the budget.

"We are trying to have no function of the city that is not self-supporting," Strange said.

Garbage collection fees are lower in Montgomery's neighboring cities, although in some areas trash is only collected once a week.

Prattville's sanitation department collects garbage for city residents twice a week for all but the western portion of the city that was annexed in 2010. In that area, trash is picked up once a week. The city charges $19 a month, or $57 a quarter.

Wetumpka uses the private firm Advanced Disposal for trash pickup in the city limits. Trash is collected once a week for a fee of $48.30 a quarter.

In Millbrook, Waste Management collects trash once a week for a fee of $58 a quarter.

Strange said Montgomery offers not only twice-a-week pickup, it also now has a state-of-the-art recycling facility that does not require residents to sort their own refuse. The facility is the only one of its kind in the state and possibly in the Southeast, he added.

"I don't think anybody is going to argue the point that we have excellent customer service," Strange said.

The idea of moving to once-a-week trash pickup has been discussed, but Strange said that only collecting garbage once a week in the heat of the Deep South is a bad idea.

"As long as we can be competitive in our charges, we can continue (to provide trash collection twice a week)," he said.

PUBLIC HEARING

What: A public hearing on the proposed 2015 operating and debt service budget

When: 5 p.m. Tuesday

Where: City Hall Auditorium, 103 N. Perry St.