The City of Peoria has a new hauling contract for solid waste and recycling service as it looks to keep disposal costs affordable for the next 30 years.
“I hope the public realizes what a sweet spot we’re in right now,” District 3 council member Tim Riggenbach said Tuesday before the Peoria City Council unanimously approved the new three-year agreement with GFL Environmental.
“We’re going to have the same landfill operator as the entity picking up our residential trash on a regular basis. This is something the landfill committee has strived for for years as we wait for Landfill 2 to close. I think this is no small accomplishment that we’re at this point right now.”
The new agreement, which represents the city’s single biggest contract, begins with a monthly household cost of $16.25 starting July 1, with $.60 increases in each of the next two years.
That adds up to $7.46 million in the first year, increasing to $8.01 million in the final year before the possible contract extensions.
“The costs have gone up for hauling due to the inflationary environment that we're seeing, so this contract reflects that,” Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich told WCBU prior to Tuesday’s meeting. “But coupled with the savings that we're seeing from our landfill contract, the city is still going to be seeing overall savings in our solid waste operations.”
The contract with the Canada-based waste management firm includes two options for two-year renewal terms. The annual per-month cost increase during the extension period is $.65, which would work out to $18.10 monthly beginning July 1, 2029.
Peoria’s previous 2018 contract with the Peoria Disposal Company was slated for termination as of June 30. GFL Environmental acquired PDC in 2021.
Urich said that contract termination spurred discussions toward an agreement with GFL for the construction of Landfill 3 while keeping disposal costs at a reasonable level.
“Really, what we tried to negotiate was a contract that really focused on the existing level of service that we have,” said Urich.
“We wanted to work through some customer service issues with the company to make sure that missed pickups were tracked; that's an important metric in the effort. And really, it's just cleaning up some language in the contract.”
The new contract provides weekly solid waste pick-up, recycling collection every other week, and 36 weeks of landscape waste hauling from mid-March through mid-December. It also covers recycling and trash collection at city buildings, small dead animal disposal, bulky waste collection, and tire disposal.
Mayor Rita Ali called the deal “a strong agreement” and credited representatives from GFL and the landfill committee for their diligence in negotiating.
“I think we've all seen some improvements over the past year, in terms of service,” she said.
Urich noted there are specific provisions in the contract that would trigger the two-year extensions. These include achieving at least a 90% score on biannual customer service surveys conducted by the city and fewer than 4,000 missed pickups over an assessment period from Oct. 1, 2025, to Oct. 31, 2027.
“Four thousand may seem like a lot of missed pickups,” said Urich. “But when you have 38,259 households, and you have weekly trash collection, and you have biweekly recycling collections, and you have the 36 weeks of landscape waste pickup — you have almost, during that period of evaluation, almost 8 million pickups we're talking about.”
Urich also noted the city currently has a $4.6 million annualized deficit in its garbage fund, but the new contract allows them to set aside $650,000 a year toward reducing that deficit.
Heidelberg settlement
The council also voted 10-1 in favor of a legal settlement to close the Cleve Heidelberg case. Peoria will pay half of a $1.5 million settlement, with the Peoria County board set to vote later this week on paying the other half.
City attorney Patrick Hayes told the council Peoria could face a “tremendous amount of liability” if Heidelberg’s case advanced in an appeal.
“Because of that, the retained attorneys the city's had on this case for some time made recommendations to the council to make an offer of a settlement that approximated our cost to defend the matter at trial,” said Hayes, noting the city has already devoted a lot of resources in its legal defense.
Heidelberg was convicted in 1970 of killing Peoria County Sheriff’s Sgt. Raymond Espinoza, but maintained his innocence. Heidelberg was free on home monitoring and awaiting a possible new trial when he died in 2018 in Peoria at age 75.
Heidelberg’s family had sought $100 million in damages from the city, the county, and former police officers and prosecutors, alleging in federal court that his constitutional rights were violated.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Sara Darrow dismissed the lawsuit last year, but that decision was open to appeal.
“The [appellate] court had made some statements in a recent motion that the motion to dismiss and [Darrow’s] decision in that matter was a close one, giving the city and the county pause that if the case was reversed on appeal, we'd be facing considerable litigation costs,” said Hayes. “In addition, the risks of going to trial on these types of cases has grown exponentially.”
Outgoing District 2 council member Chuck Grayeb cast the only vote against the settlement, believing the city and county stood to prevail in the case and the payout would only put the city at risk of future civil litigation.
“We are not protecting our city or county taxpayers when we cave in to such outrageous demands,” said Grayeb. “You are opening up our city to more and more of these lawsuits. Now, I'd be the first to say, ‘Let's settle it,’ If I felt that any of our … county or city actors, law enforcement officials, did something wrong. But nobody has made that assertion to me. Nobody.”
At-large council member Zach Oyler also expressed a distaste for the settlement.
“On its face, I disagree with doing this, but my fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer says that to mitigate the risks, it's something that we should do because of the legal costs and the potential liability that comes with it,” said Oyler.
“I think at the end of the day, we should prevail in a case like this. But our responsibility is to protect the taxpayer and ensure that we don't end up in a situation where we have to bond money to pay a settlement like this and raise taxes to do it.”
Urich and Hayes told the council the money for the settlement would come out of the general fund’s 2024 budget for the city’s legal department.
Other actions
Finance director Kyle Cratty presented his unaudited report through the month ending Feb. 28, showing overall revenues at 12.6% below budget and expenditures down 7.2% for the year to date.
“Obviously, I know when you see double-digit numbers like that, there always can be a growing concern of, ‘Is there an issue?’” said Cratty. “We are always in the position that in the first few months of the year, we have expenditures out for things like payroll and other items, while a majority of revenue — those sales taxes and other items — are accrued back to the previous year, because that’s really when they were earned.
“So you will start to see more revenue come into the general fund in that March-April time frame, especially with the April report is when we get the first month of sales taxes.”
Items approved as part of the consent agenda include:
- A $14.3 million private activity bond allocation for the 2025 annual home-rule volume cap, safeguarded by the Tri-County River Valley Development Authority;
- Contracts totaling $550,000 with seven companies for mowing city-maintained vacant lots, and $112,000 for facilities, boulevards and rights-of-way mowing;
- A $62,600 legal settlement to resolve a lawsuit related to the city’s stormwater utility fees;
- Appointments of Jessica King to the CDBG Public Services Advisory Commission and Lisa Fisher to the East Village Growth Cell Advisory Committee.
Prior to the city council meeting, the annual Peoria Township town meeting was held. The township electors present voted 20-1 in favor of placing a non-binding question on the March 2026 ballot aimed at lowering the threshold for signatures needed on nominating petitions for independent and new-party candidates.
