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Pleasant Prairie board pauses outsourcing decision, orders full cost comparison of garbage proposal
Summary
After a packed public hearing in which residents and public‑works staff urged the village to keep sanitation in house, the board directed staff to produce a detailed apples‑to‑apples comparison of in‑house costs versus a proposal from John's Disposal before deciding whether to outsource collection and recycling.
The Village Board of Pleasant Prairie voted Feb. 19 to direct staff to prepare a comprehensive, multi‑year cost comparison that lays out the full financial and operational impacts of a proposed contract with John's Disposal Service.
The motion, made by Trustee Mike Polokoff and seconded by Trustee Jim Kramer, follows a months‑long RFP process and a lengthy public hearing. The staff presentation summarized RFP DPW2501 and showed that the company’s base proposal (option 1) would charge an estimated $21.25 per household in year one and include a 4% annual escalator. Finance director Kathy said the village’s current bundled in‑house cost (including recycling center operations and other allocations) equates to roughly $19.50–$23.50 depending on which line items are included, and that contracting would also shift $196,000 per year in ancillary revenues away from the village’s enterprise funds.
Residents and multiple public‑works employees packed the meeting and urged the board not to move forward without more analysis. As one DPW employee wrote in public comments read to the board, the RFP “appears more expensive on an annual basis than our current in‑house operation and includes a 4% annual escalator.”
John's Disposal vice president Nate Austin, who attended and answered questions, said the company would increase weekly service levels (weekly recycling and an inclusive monthly bulk pickup) and stressed local capacity. “We pick up 200,000 carts a week, and we have about 80 active, municipal contracts,” he told the board during his presentation.
But village staff and union representatives warned of operational ripple effects if four sanitation positions are removed, including reduced overnight snow‑plow capacity and less flexibility for special events and police calls. Several staff members described frequent cross‑department work and on‑call rotations that would be affected if positions were eliminated.
The board’s directive asks staff to produce a line‑by‑line comparison that includes: residential recycling‑center staffing and hazardous‑waste handling, fleet replacement and maintenance costs, billing and administrative overhead, lost fee revenues (for extra carts and paid bulk pickups), and projected five‑year impacts. Trustees emphasized they did not want the state Wisconsin Innovation Grant deadline to drive the policy decision. Trustee Polokoff summarized the board’s action as a request for more precise numbers, not an immediate policy change.
