St. Louis streets officials pitch recycling drop‑off, flag shortfalls in towing, permits and paving funding

St. Louis City streets and refuse officials told the Board of Aldermen’s Budget and Public Employees Committee that their FY26 budget leaves several operational shortfalls and that a proposed shift from alley recycling dumpsters to centralized drop‑off sites could cut processing costs and free staff for trash collection.

In testimony Monday, interim Streets Director Jim Solman and Commissioner of Refuse Ricky Breidenfeld said about 60% of material collected from alley recycling dumpsters is contaminated and sent to landfill, at a processing cost they said is currently about $185 per ton. “Sixty percent of what we collect in recyclables has got to go to landfill anyway. We’re paying a hundred and $85 a ton for stuff that we’re gonna send to the landfill,” Breidenfeld said. Both officials described a plan to replace many alley dumpsters with roughly 30–50 staffed or fixed drop‑off points and dedicate one or two drivers to those sites, freeing up drivers to run alley and curbside collection routes.

The move is tied to staffing and budget constraints across Streets. Solman said the department does roughly 600 jobs a year and reported about 455 completed this year; construction contractor prices are rising and the Streets director said the division will likely need roughly an additional $500,000 to meet workload for FY26. Ken Flake, commissioner of streets, said a reduction shown on the personnel schedule for the debris crew reflects an internal reclassification to an administrative account rather than a net loss of field capacity: “It's not changing the number of people in the program itself. It's just kind of moving those…