FORT SMITH -- City directors will consider two proposals next month to provide recycling services to the city.
In a study session in front of 200 people Tuesday, directors decided to consider a proposal from Marck Industries of Cassville, Mo., to open a recycling facility in an industrial area in downtown Fort Smith to process the city's recyclable material.
From city staff information presented to the directors, the city would pay $1.556 million over the three-year life of a contract but would gain $1.32 million in proceeds from sharing in the sale of the recyclable material, for a net expense to the city of more than $245,800.
Marck also proposed that, as part of the deal, the city would pay the company $25 a ton for the first 1,000 tons of waste it takes to the city's landfill as a discount from the city's $34.43 a ton dumping fee.
City directors hoped the discount would help defray the expense of Marck cleaning up its location at 301 North Second St., which was the site of a past recycling operation and which one director called an eyesore.
In a proposal made Tuesday, Third Rock Recycling of Webb City, Mo., also would start a recycling operation in Fort Smith that would become a partnership with the city.
Under the proposal as explained Tuesday by Deputy City Administrator Jeff Dingman, Third Rock would install a baling machine it owns to bundle the recyclable material for sale. The city would buy a machine to sort the material.
Dingman said once the city took the recyclables to Third Rock, Fort Smith would pay $80 a ton and Third Rock would process and sell the material without any more expense to the city. If the city bought and added a sorting machine, Dingman said, Third Rock would pay the city for the recyclable waste at $10 a ton.
Spread sheet figures showed the city's cost under the Third Rock proposal would be about $303,000 for the first year of a three-year contract. The cost would include the price of the sorting machine and the cost of taking recyclable material to Fayetteville for the first year until the local operation was ready to open.
In the second and third year of the contract, it would make more than $400,000 for a net gain over first year expenses of $97,666.
As things stand now, Dingman told directors, it appears Third Rock offered the best deal for the city.
The directors told Dingman and City Administrator Carl Geffken to continue negotiation with both companies and present proposals to the directors at their June 6 meeting for a possible vote.
Both proposals had their downsides. Marck's property is on the edge of downtown and blocks from the location of the future U.S. Marshals Museum. Directors talked of the area as a downtown Renaissance area but the Marck site is heaped tall with bundled paper and other debris from the past recycling center.
Geffken told the directors the city and Marck would work to find a new location for Marck outside downtown. Geffken said there was a possible site at Chaffee Crossing near the city's landfill.
Third Rock doesn't have a location in Fort Smith. Dingman said Third Rock officials were in Fort Smith on Tuesday looking at sites. The company estimated it could take a year to get a recycling site open in Fort Smith.
In the meantime, Dingman said, Fort Smith would have to take its recycling to a Third Rock site in Fayetteville. Each trip would cost the city $160, he said. In a memo to directors, Dingman wrote the city could expect to make 30 trips a month to Fayetteville.
Directors said they were impatient to resume recycling in Fort Smith. Officials drew criticism when they disclosed in a May 1 news release the city's Sanitation Department had been sending to the landfill waste residents had been setting out for separate collection with the expectation it would be recycled.
The news release said the city diverted recycling to the landfill only since November. But information soon surfaced all material collected in Fort Smith was being dumped in the landfill since June. Since the expiration of the city's recycling contract with Smurfit Kappa of Fort Smith in 2014, only a small percentage of the recyclable material collected was recycled.
NW News on 05/25/2017