GREEN RIVER — With two Green River City Council members absent, resident opposition and a 2-3 Council vote, proposed amendments to the city’s green waste services were defeated.

Wyoming Waste Systems requested an amendment to its contract with the city to allow them to stop green waste services from about mid-November through mid-April, with one week of pickups in January for Christmas trees. After a couple months of discussion, the Green River City Council ultimately voted against the amendment. Councilmen Ron Williams and Robert Berg joined Councilwoman Sherry Bushman, in voting against the amendment, while Councilman Gary Killpack and Mayor Pete Rust voted for it. Councilmen Mark Shutran and George Jost were absent from the meeting.

The Council members who voted against the amendment stated they were doing so as Wyoming Waste would be providing fewer services without offering anything to the city and residents in return. Williams said he would have liked for Wyoming Waste to offer weekly recycling during winter to make up for the removed green waste pick up dates, or some other additional service. He pointed out that Wyoming Waste told the Council during a workshop last week that the green waste truck driver would not be laid off or lose hours.

“We are losing an estimate of 400 hours of service every year,” Williams said.

Bushman agreed with Williams, stating that an extra cardboard container or pick up would have been appreciated.

“There was nothing that was provided as a benefit of the city, it was just a benefit for waste management,” she said.

Green River resident James Hannum also suggested weekly curbside recycling pick up when speaking against the amendment. He said this seems to be a “less services for more money” situation. Hannum said it is common sense to eliminate green waste pick ups during the winter, but he questioned why he should have to pay the same amount for less services being offered.

Jared “Zeke” Kropf, Green River resident, also spoke against the amendment as he believes they are “minimizing the actual benefit to waste management and not getting that for the citizens.” He said if they eliminated green waste services from mid-November to mid-April then there would be nine weeks of no service. He said he did the math and it would eliminate around 9% of the service that residents are paying for.

Killpack offered an opinion in favor of the amendment, stating that it makes sense for Wyoming Waste to amend their contract, as it is “silly” to send out a driver to pick up around five or six green waste cans in the winter. While he said he can also see why residents would like a cut in their rates, he said it would not be a big savings.

Killpack suggested Wyoming Waste just stop running the yard waste truck in the winter and let the garbage truck pick up any green waste bins that are set out. This way there would be no change to the contract, and he said that it’s their right as a business. 

“If I was running the business, that’s exactly what I would do, and I would never had said anything to the city. I would have just done it,” Killpack said.

Michelle Foote, Wyoming Waste office manager, said they did that last year. However, this year they came to the Council with an amendment to be transparent with the residents and the city. She said the reason Wyoming Waste didn’t propose weekly recycling or allowing residents to use the green waste bin as an extra trash bin is because that would then require them to re-educate residents when green waste services started back up in the spring. She said they are trying to avoid confusion amongst residents.

Killpack sought an amendment to the motion being considered by the Council to allow Wyoming Waste to send the one trash truck out and allow Wyoming Waste to pick up any green waste with that truck.

“If we want to be a business-friendly community, we need to work with those companies like Wyoming Waste,” he said.

However, the motion died due to a lack of a second. The majority of the Council then voted against the original motion that would have allowed Wyoming Waste to stop green waste services. Mayor Rust clarified that this means services will be “business as usual.”