St. Paul orders extra garbage bins to save on shipping

The Town of St. Paul will be ordering 300 extra garbage bins in order to save on future shipping costs. At the last council meeting, the tender for the waste bins was awarded to Superior Truck Equipment for a cost of $157,732.02 plus GST. With the additional bins, the total cost will be $180,264.35 plus GST. The original budget for the bins was $180,050.

“Extra bins would allow for the public to acquire a second bin, if they felt they needed one. And also would provide our department with spare parts, because these bins would not come assembled, which is important,” said Director of Public Works Steven Jeffery.

According to Jeffery, the company is willing to provide the additional bins at the same cost per unit that was agreed on for the original order, raising the total cost for the waste bins by $24,135.21.

“We’re paying for the shipping already, so this would be essentially getting a little better bang for our buck by adding more carts without adding more cost to the shipping,” said Jeffery, noting the truck does still have some room in it.

Coun. Ron Boisvert’s motion to approve the purchase of the additional waste bins was carried.

Also discussed by council was the need for some regulations governing a second bin for town residences and whether or not the town would be charging for additional garbage bins.

Coun. Nathan Taylor was concerned making a second bin available would enable people to easily throw out more garbage, adding to the weight of the trucks going from St. Paul to Evergreen Landfill.

“My suggestion is before we would allow any secondary bin to go to any residence, we have to have a policy or bylaw in place to set out the price that we would charge. Because that homeowner should have to pay, if not double at least an increased price on their utility bill for that charge each month or bi-monthly to do that,” said Taylor.