Wyckoff December 12, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 Township expects $100K in savings from contracts by John Koster Wyckoff residents can anticipate a collective tax savings of more than $100,000 in 2013 through negotiated bids and new policies on garbage pickups and tipping fees and recycling. The Wyckoff Township Committee approved a new garbage collection contract at last week’s meeting. The price will be $415,000 in 2013, a reduction from the 2012 contract of $509,000. The savings was achieved by reducing the schedule of twice-a-week pickups from seven months of the year to two months of the year: July and August. The once-a-week schedule will now prevail for 10 months, rather than from spring to autumn. The tipping fee to drop off garbage at landfills has been reduced from $69.45 per ton to $62.50 for the first year of the five-year contract. At the end of the contract, the tipping fee will be $64.50, which is still lower than the 2012 rate. The reduction was achieved through a consolidated contract by WOLF -- Wyckoff, Oakland, and Franklin Lakes -- to attract the lowest unit bidder due to increased bulk, another example of the shared services the WOLF group was founded to explore. An anomaly in the cost savings is that the contract for recycling has been negotiated at $218,000 for weekly pickups for 2013, considerably increased from the $117,000 per year for twice-a-month pickups negotiated 10 years ago and no longer remotely available. However, Wyckoff officials report that they have been stalled at 30 percent recycling turnover despite their “Nifty Fifty” effort to recycle half of all Wyckoff materials, rather than dispose of them through the garbage cycle. The hope is that by conducting recy- cling pickups every week instead of every two weeks, the township will encourage residents to recycle more often and will reduce the amount of material hauled to landfills as opposed to recycling centers for reuse. Wyckoff officials estimate that the change in solid waste and recycling will produce annual savings of $48,650 if patterns of disposal work as anticipated. The additional savings, pushing the savings over the $100,000 mark, comes with a new policy decision: There will be no more curbside pickup of lawn clippings. Deleting this service from the regular recycling of single-stream paper, glass, tin cans, aluminum cans, seven kinds of plastic, and waxed food containers will save $65,000 a year. This change is also seen as having environmental benefits, officials said. (continued on page 21)