The City of Davis is seeking a consultant to help it solicit, review, select and negotiate its next solid waste hauling contract. The city posted the request on Oct. 8, and proposals are due by 4 p.m. on Oct. 30. The consultant's contract would run two years, with an option to extend it if the work takes longer. The search follows the City Council's 4-1 vote on Sept. 1 to seek proposals from haulers rather than negotiate a new contract with Recology alone.
The request lays out a tentative schedule. The consultant and city staff would develop service-level options and present them to city commissions in November and December. Outreach to the community on service levels would run from January to June 2027, and survey results would go to commissions and the City Council in August and September 2027. From September 2027 to January 2028 the city would draft and release its request for proposals from haulers, review the bids and develop recommendations. It would bring a recommendation to commissions and the council in February and March 2028 and negotiate a contract from March to July 2028. The city says these dates are tentative and may change.
For residents, the main chances to weigh in are listed in the consultant's first task: a community survey on service levels, two community workshops, and tabling at the local Farmers Market, along with reports to the city's Climate & Environmental Justice and Fiscal commissions and the council. In an Oct. 20 addendum, the city said the survey is meant to collect public feedback rather than serve as a statistically valid poll, and will be open to residential and commercial customers. For now it is planned in English only. Staff plan to have the council review the survey before it is released, which could change that, and said staff could translate it into Spanish if needed.
The options to be studied are broad. The consultant is to list possible service levels for trash, recycling, organics, yard materials, bulky waste, hazardous waste and street sweeping, including drop-off versus pickup, seasonal collection and on-call service. It is also to consider up to four rate structures with added or modified services, such as two free organics carts per customer, fees for cart or bin overages, fees for locking waste enclosures and early-start requests, and to examine whether charges for on-street yard-material pile collection could take parcel size or use into account. These are options for study, not decisions; the council will select the service levels that go into the request for haulers.
Davis now has a six-stream collection system: trash, paper recycling, mixed recycling for plastic, metal and glass, organics, on-street yard-material piles and cardboard. Customers who subscribe to trash service get unlimited recycling and one organics cart at no extra charge. Recology Davis serves 14,209 residential, 672 commercial and 287 multifamily accounts, according to the city. The council approved solid waste rate increases for the next five years in January, and the current hauling agreement is set to expire Dec. 31, 2029.
When the city seeks bids from haulers, the consultant is to help write the criteria for ranking them. Examples in the request include technical approach, customer service and community engagement, environmental performance, proposed rates, experience and company values. The consultant would also compare the cost of the proposals with current rates and regional benchmarks for the Fiscal Commission and the council.