City looks at move for recycling site, improving service

The City of Whitefish is exploring future options for its central recycling site currently located on the snow lot.

The snow lot, named because it’s where the city stores snow removed from downtown, is at the corner of Columbia Avenue and Railway Street. The city in 2016 consolidated its recycling into one centralized site at the snow lot after closing several satellite recycling locations.

However, now the city after several years of planning is trying to finalize plans to develop an affordable housing project on the property and this needs to find a new location for recycling.

City Manager Dana Smith said the city is also renegotiating its contact with Republic Services, which it contracts with for garbage and recycling services.

“We’re going to develop housing on the snow lot so we need to figure out a new recycling site,” Smith said.

During a recent work session, Council seemed to favor exploring the option of moving the recycling site to the Mountain Mall. The location would still need to be negotiated with the mall, but Council directed Smith to explore that option.

Smith said other options included locating the recycling at the city’s wastewater treatment plant property off Monegan Road, but that site is farther from the city center, or at the Public Works shop, but that’s accessed by 18th Street which is a narrow street.

“[The mall location] seems to have the best access and would be the most central location,” Smith said.

In addition, Smith said, Mountain Mall still owes the city $80,000 in tax increment finance funds from the $200,000 the city provided to it to remodel the facade of the mall prior to when the Shopko Hometown store opened. The store has since closed.

The mall’s owners told Council that if tax-increment revenues from the mall did not equal $200,000 by 2020, they would pay back the city for the balance.

Smith said providing a spot in the mall’s parking lot for the location of the recycling site could be a way for the mall to provide a public benefit for the money it owes the city. The recycling site would be about 40 feet by 100 feet in size, and the city says it would fit on the east side of the mall in its parking lot.

Representatives from Republic Services also attended the meeting to discuss recycling services with Council.

Mike Cross, general manager for Republic Services based in Great Falls, said the company plans to continue its recycling service at the city’s site, but recycling does face challenges on a broader scale and at the Whitefish site.

“There are some challenges at the current site,” he said. “We want to be a better partner working with the city and the school and look at ways to improve things such as through education moving forward.”

Specifically in Whitefish, he noted, because the site is unmanned often items are left beside the recycling bins that should be taken to the landfill or items that can’t be recycled are put into the bins. While bins become contaminated with items that aren’t recyclable, the company still takes those to be recycled but has to pay a penalty for the contamination.

“People are using it as a dumping grounds,” Cross said. “We could look at restricting access to eliminate this. Also public education helps to lower the contamination rate and there are K-12 education recycling programs that could provide an opportunity to work withe schools.”

Cross said Republic Services is currently losing money every month on recycling in Whitefish, and it would like to work with the city to improve operations. And in addition to education, one of the ways may be to have separate bins for plastic and metal recycling.

“We want to at least break even,” he said.

Cross said one of the hangups in recycling is that previously large companies like Republic Services were able to subsidize the cost of recycling making it appear to consumers like there was no real cost to recycling programs. The problem, he said, is that after commodities prices dropped companies were no longer able to make up the cost through selling the recyclable materials.

He noted that market studies have shown that customers are willing to pay 80% for recycling what they pay for garbage service and that can be a way to make recycling programs work. For example, if a customer pays $10 for garbage they would likely be willing to pay $8 for recycling.

“I fully believe in recycling and Republic Services fully believes in recycling,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do, but Montana is challenging for recycling for processing and shipping.”