Garbage pickup in Laconia
 

A lot is being discussed about the future of garbage pickup in the city. Curious, do the surrounding towns offer weekly garbage pickup?


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No town provided trash pickup in Moultonborough. Take it to the Transfer Station or privately pay and hire a trash contractor.

dump or private in Meredith
 

...Private trash or go to the dump in Meredith. We use C&B Refuse/Recycling. Husband and wife from Meredith. They are great and we are happy to support the small biz....

Difference being Laconia is a City, and as a City has to provide certian services, not saying Garbage needs to be included in the taxes, but can't compare city status to Town status

Where is it written that a city must provide services differently then a town? Yes, we may all have expectations of what living in a city means. But, it’s not law garage must be picked up weekly The city has a good transfer station that everyone has access to. If the city was to reinvest the money it currently pays for pickup into the transfer station you may have a solution. Or has the cost of other services have increased why are we discussing a cost increase to the collection of garbage? Pay it and move on


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I am not aware of any requirement that city's have to provide services that towns do not.

My understanding of the difference is City Councils and Mayors VS Selectmen and Town Meetings. I don't think the services are required to be different, it is just a different makeup of the Government.

Laconia is talking about putting in automated trash pickup which requires less manual labor. The truck lifts and dumps the container rather than people.

https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news...8b661c340.html

Bottom line is, we will be going to the automated trash pick up whether we like it or not...

And yes YOU will be required to buy the special trash cans!


Woodsy

Disagree. Too many factors involved to go automated. W Anderson head of the DPW is a chicken little. From the private road situation, parking garage costs and now it’s garbage. Toss in a lame duck city manager we have a trash issue that may not be as urgent as we are being told. Pay the new costs, go by weekly pickup or improve the current transfer station. We have options other then automated pickup of every other bin due to the homeowner unable to place it in the proper location due to various reasons


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64 gal Casella trash can lids
 

This is definitely the GREATEST home video on the Casella 64-gallon trash container ever made! It is so TOTALLY good!

Question; how do you keep trash cans lids from being opened in wind ???

........... www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKX1i6c-SHY ..... 1.06 .... Dec 17, 2021

........... any help .... any comments ..... if you like this video then maybe you want to hit the thumbs-up button! ..... :D

The lids have NO snap catch and filling it with trash will raise up the lid a wee bit, making it fly open with a light wind.

These here 64-gal trash can lids ...... they be blowing open in the wind and next ...... what happens ...... the trash flies out! ..... oh nooooo! ... now's you got yo-self a trashy neighborhood! ...... :eek:

Some smart person should design a lid latch for these 64-gal containers that works good with the automated side loader (ASL) truck.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_truck ........ Hey, shouldn't Wikipedia call it a trash truck and not a garbage truck!

I don't have a dog in the fight... but what concerns me is the all of the companies declining to bid. I am sure this automated pickup will eventually be the way... We are at the mercy of the trash companies. It is not about what us citizens want.

Woodsy

Not really. The citizens could give up trash collection or go to private only collection.

Laconia falls in love with its two-person Mercedes-Benz trash pickup service!
 

Hey ...... one drives the truck, and one strong-arms the trash into the back of this beautiful Mercedes-Benz. A silver & white M-B trash truck just like this picture ..... https://mbs.mercedes-benz.com/en/eco...-megacity.html

Just take a minute and picture in your mind one of these Mercedes-Benz beauties with "Laconia - City on the Lakes" signed on the side in flowing letters.

Laconia should go first class and give itself a ton of long time, positive publicity by purchasing its very own Mercedes-Benz trash compacter truck. ... :eek:

Laconia could become known as "The city with the Mercedes-Benz trash truck". In Laconia they treat your trash like an Olympic gold medal champion! .... :D

Tilton does (not a lakefront town, but considered Lakes Region).

They also still have a transfer station for the bigger stuff.

Works great for us.

FWIW: Pelham does not and I would just do a transfer station run in the pickup every weekend when I lived down there. They charged double the taxes of Tilton with ZERO services (no trash/water/gas/sewer).

'Pay-as-you-throw PURPLE trash bags'

Hey there LACONIA ...... what about that PAYT purple bags, pay-as-you-throw, two-person trash truck team. What about those purple 30-gallon pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) $2.50-each, trash bags, that some cities ... www.concordnh.gov/911/Trash ... require to create a revenue stream to help pay trash removal? You buy them at the local store, five purple 30-gal bags for $12.50.

Sounds like a good plan because "the PAYT program encourages residents to produce less trash. PAYT allows residents to be in direct control of how much they pay for their solid waste services based on how much they chose to throw away, rather than having to pay a flat fee for the entire community's trash disposal."

People probably do a much better job for compacting it all to fit it into one single purple $2.50 bag by crushing cans, plastic bottles and plastic food containers with one of those $19.95 heavy duty, wall mounted, aluminum can crushers that go THUNK when it crushes the can.

Feb 18, 2022: 'Why can't Concord get rid of plastic bags for trash pickup?' ..... https://www.concordmonitor.com/biode...loney-45040655 ..... which also says that having the community pay $2.50/purple 30-gal trash bag will result in reducing the volume of trash by SIXTY PERCENT due to this $2.50 incentive to compact all your trash items. So, your trash compacter truck has its load of trash reduced to forty percent by going with purple $2.50 30-gal bags, plus it creates a revenue stream for trash service.

How's about a bright purple Mercedes-Benz trash truck and matching purple uniforms for the two-person team of driver & loader ..... Laconia's purple team! ..... here comes the purple team ..... slowly down the road doing the purple trash.

I thought I read that Laconia had $600,000 in the proposal to give one large tote to each house.

I have had that system for 15 years in Florida and it works well. One man driving and operating the tote retrieval system saves money. If you have more trash, you can just leave a bag next to the tote and the driver will jump out and collect that too.

I think for Laconia it isn't so much about the cost, as that that option may not exist much longer. The only trash removal private company to bid may not be willing to keep going manually.

As for the comparison to Florida... a lot of snowbanks in Florida? The concerning question to many is whether the system will function in our climate.

Agree. Could the city be asking for something odd in the bid package that scared others away? Or is it as simple as you say, no one wants the job at any cost. As I continue to think about this issue is Laconia the furthest north municipality that offers trash pickup?


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The Town of Waterville Valley Public Works & Municipal Services Department owns and operates a great big, blue MACK trash compactor truck with a driver and a loader, a two-person team. Waterville Valley has about 500 residents and varying number of resort visitors. Believe this WV town trash truck hauls the trash to the Casella landfill in Bethlehem, NH.

The ski area probably has some type of compacter dumpster or something that gets hauled away by a dumpster service?

"OUT HERE,
IT'S PICK UP OR
SHUT UP."

This here town, Waterville Valley, is very free of tossed beverage cans, bottles and small litter so people out walking probably make their small personal effort to pick it up.

MACK trash compacter trucks ....... http://www.macktrucks.com/-/media/fi...-brochure.pfd/

I don't think we get a lot of bidders in Belmont either. So I am not sure what the issues are that limit the number of bids.

Town/city trash pickup is becoming a thing of the past pretty much everywhere. The only places that offer it around here (Mass) are the larger cities, most towns don't anymore. I pay here at home and it's not a deal breaker I'm billed like $120 (ish) every three months. Not enough for me to bother bringing it all to the dump myself but to each his own I suppose. I'm supplied with one large trash and one large recycle bin. Neither of which I ever fill from week to week. I'm not billed for extra bags that are left as long as your not leaving crazy extra amounts every single week.

Towns and cities should all provide basic services, suck as police, fire, road maintenance, water, sewer, and garbage pickup.

Those who opt to "cheap out" impose a burden on townspeople.

Just pay up, people, life is too short to have to haul off your own garbage: without a pickup it will stink up your Corolla.

Agree. Let’s hope the city council sees it as we do. If you are in Laconia please remember to email or call your city representative and express your view


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I don't think I have seen anything about the city opting out.
Simply the only bidder has provided two prices with the automated being lower, and a warning that in the future only automated service may exist from them.

It was brought up at last weeks council meeting by the DPW as a option. Anderson was against due to employment risk and startup costs


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''Anderson estimated the cost for trash and recyclable collection for the coming year using the automated system would be about $880,000, while if the city were to continue the manual method would put the cost at about $1.3 million.''

Casella will not continue manual collection after the end of the current multi-year contract.

What you seem to be reading-in is the discussion about the city going in-house on the service rather than out-to-bid.

I believe Myers and Hosmer were concerned on that due to costs.
The Director of Public Works would simply get a bigger staff, bigger fleet, bigger budget, and maybe a big ole raise for the extra management effort.

The same decision will need to be made by Belmont; and I have a rough idea that it is going to be a pain.