The city of Maple Valley will pursue a competitive process to determine who its next garbage hauler will be.

At the March 25 City Council meeting the Maple Valley public works department recommended the city pursue a competitive request for proposals process as the city’s solid waste contract with Waste Management is set to expire in August of 2014.

The city had three options of how it could proceed, either going through a competitive process, exercising one or both of two 2-year extensions built in to the current contract, or negotiating a new contract with Waste Management.

The council reached consensus at the March 25 meeting, giving the public works department the go-ahead to pursue the competitive process.

When going through the competitive process, the city can either go out for a bid or can do a request for proposals. According to Diana Pistoll, public works program coordinator for the city, the difference between the two is that a bid specifies what services the city wants and asks potential bidders to name their price, while an RFP asks bidders what they can do for the city and then the city can negotiate from there.

“I think it’s a good idea to always review contracts every five years,” said Councilman Sean Kelly in a phone interview Monday. “We reviewed the police contract two years ago, this year we’re reviewing legal services…I think Waste Management has done an outstanding job, but I am fan of reviewing the contracts.”

Kelly also thinks that going out for a bid gives the city the chance to benefit from innovation.

“There’s always new ideas out there and we miss them if we don’t review everything,” Kelly said.

The last time the city went through a competitive process was 2007, after which it entered into the current contract with Waste Management.

According to city documents, the staff feel that now is a good time to go through the competitive process and that there is a possibility the city could secure a lower rate. Pistoll said that among other cities in King County that have recently negotiated new contracts several cities were not able to secure lower rates, but cities that went through a competitive process did.

“Our sole loyalty is to the rate payers of Maple Valley,” Pistoll said.

At the end of the current contract the city will own the approximately 17,000 residential carts — the garbage cans provided by the hauler — that are on the streets, which is a potential cost saving aspect of the next contract because that won’t be a cost to the next hauler.

“That (owning the carts) is one of the reasons we think we might get a lower rate,” Pistoll said.

The current contract expires Aug. 31, 2014, and the city wants to have a new contract in place six to eight months before the current contract expires. Pistoll said the city will issue a request for proposals in September or October and proposals from perspective haulers would be due in December with a new contract would be selected in January or February.

As part of the competitive process the city will work with a consultant, Jeff Brown of Epicenter Services LLC, who will assist with drafting the contract and analyzing the responses. This contract will cost the city approximately $17,500 which is included in the public works budget for this year.

The last time the city went through the competitive process it cost $34,614. The extra cost, Pistoll said, came from a survey the city did.

That $34,614 was ultimately billed to Waste Management as a one time administration fee.

Councilwoman Linda Johnson voiced concern at the March 25 meeting the city may not be able to secure a lower rate.

“A competitive process is always a good thing, I’m not opposed to that,” said Johnson in a phone interview April 2. “What concerns me is that we did the competition (in 2007) and nobody has done any market analysis. We could be walking away from good pricing.”

Pistoll said that the benefit of the RFP process is that it allows cities and haulers to be innovative and because of that the city could get lower rate and more services.

“The only way we really know is to go through the competitive process because competition is the mechanism through which you get the best price,” Pistoll said. “The beauty of it is that (the RFP) is open-ended…we get to see what we’re offered and then negotiate through it.”