By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Residential customers will not see a rate change once the city of Alabaster begins operating its own garbage service in 2018, after the Alabaster City Council voted to set the rates during an Oct. 9 meeting.

The move came after a public hearing on the matter, during which nobody spoke for or against the proposed rates.

As a result of the vote, monthly residential garbage collection rates will not change from their current number of $15.27 when the city takes over the service from Advanced Disposal at the beginning of the year. The $15.27 rate will include one garbage cart and one recycling cart, and customers would pay one-half the residential rate for each additional cart.

Commercial and non-residential customers would pay $30.54 per month, would receive two carts and would pay one-half the commercial rate for each additional cart up to a maximum of four, according to the proposed ordinance.

“Beginning in January 2019, the fee shall be adjusted annually utilizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index,” read the ordinance approved by the council. “Mobile home parks and apartment complexes shall be serviced by dumpsters or other acceptable means that are not serviced by the city.”

The rates will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

“When we decided to do our own city garbage service, we said we’d do so without any rate increase,” said Ward 5 Councilman Russell Bedsole. “We simply have to solidify these rates in our code.”

During a late August meeting, council members voted to award a $1.25 million bid to Wayne Davis to construct the public works facility at Limestone Park between the park’s central lake and the Alabaster Police Department shooting range.

The facility will include a brick façade on the front, and paving in the area immediately surrounding the building. The city is not currently planning to pave the gravel road leading from U.S. 31 to the garbage truck facility, as was originally planned.

Once completed in spring 2018, the Limestone facility will play a major role in Alabaster’s city-run garbage service, which is slated to begin in January 2018. The city’s current garbage and recycling provider, Advanced Disposal, will continue to serve the city until then.