Mayor: ‘One size does not fit all here in Ocean City’
OCEAN CITY — Property owners using oversized trash cans will cost the city an extra $22,500 a month from June through the end of October. Because they’re also using oversized recycling containers, the city agreed to be on the hook for an addition $22,500 a month.
Ocean City Council approved two resolutions at its meeting Thursday morning for change orders to the trash and recycling contracts.
That will buy the city time to consider solutions, according to Mayor Jay Gillian, who said the problem is not as simple as it seems.
“One size does not fit all here in Ocean City,” he said.
The original contract approved Aug. 25, 2022 with Pinelands Construction Co. was for $975,000. The contract requires property owners to use trash and recycling containers no larger than 32 gallons.
The resolutions approved Thursday morning are for change orders to the original contract. Pinelands agreed to pick up trash and recycling in containers as large as 64 gallons through the end of October, but because of the added costs to the company, the city will pay an extra $225,000 in total over those five months.
One change order is for $22,500 a month for the trash and the other $22,500 a month is for the recycling. Council unanimously approved both resolutions in the consent agenda.
Before the vote, the mayor said trash cans are getting bigger and the enclosures for them are getting bigger and taller, with both issues creating more issues for the contractor.
There is an ordinance that says how many gallons the containers have to be, but many property owners are not following it, either intentionally or because they go and simply buy the wrong size containers.
Because it is a citywide program, Gillian said they need time to figure out what to do.
He said he didn’t want to get into arguments with people over the size of their trash cans so the most prudent decision was to agree to the change orders and then work on the issue after the summer season is over and before next year’s budget.
Gillian noted taxes are not going to be raised because of the change orders approved Thursday.
Talking about the various issues, he mentioned Ocean City “is a big community with so many different nooks and crannies and alleys,” he said. Going with smaller containers means having more containers.
The resort must figure something out because it has grown so large during the summer season, when the population can soar from the roughly 11,000 year-round residents in the off-season to as many as 250,000 in town on a busy summer weekend.
“As a government it’s up to us to find the most cost-efficient way to deal with it,” Gillian said.
The mayor noted the contractor has been dealing with the oversized containers for a while but finally drew a line in the sand because of his increasing costs, including worker’s compensation insurance and the fact the collectors are having to lift oversized containers packed with trash out of the corrals.
“There are going to be some changes. We’re going to start with the corrals,” Gillian said. “They’re building them bigger and higher and you think about a 96-gallon trash can and ask these guys to lift them out, and the time it takes ….”
The change orders are “the best way to buy time,” he said. The administration will work with City Council, the contractor and citizens to come up with a solution.
“This isn’t as easy as everyone thinks it is,” he said.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff