By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – City residents will have a chance to voice their opinions on the city’s garbage collection rates in early October, as the City Council is set to hold a public hearing on the matter.

The hearing will be during the council’s Oct. 9 meeting, which will begin at 7 p.m. at Alabaster City Hall at 1953 Municipal Way.

The council will hold the hearing in advance of setting rates for the city-run garbage collection service, which will begin in January 2018.

As proposed, monthly residential garbage collection rates would 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 would include one garbage 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 proposed ordinance. “Mobile home parks and apartment complexes shall be serviced by dumpsters or other acceptable means that are not serviced by the city.”

If passed, the rates will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

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.