Sharon’s Battle for the Bin Winner: RaeKar Awarded Contract

The city of Sharon took trash bids on their service and received bids from both RaeKar and Republic Services. The city’s contract is up in October this year and it takes them 60 days to get everything processed for the winner of the contract.

Sharon has always gone with Republic Services, but that all changed tonight when the board voted to accept the bid from RaeKar.

“And I will start out by saying, we need to take bids for a purpose, and it's for the price. But I'll have to say that I have been very satisfied with Republic. Jerry has worked well with us. But again, when you take bids, I just, I know what most cities do when they take bids. They're trying to see what they can get for the lower price. So it's nothing against Republic or their business or what they have done for us,” Stricklin stated.

RaeKar has the monopoly on Weakley County with just recently securing contracts with the City of Dresden, McKenzie and the Rural County route. RaeKar is already the provider for Martin, Gleason and Greenfield, and now RaeKar has the contract for Sharon also, making them the trash service provider for every person in Weakley County.

RaeKar is a Tennessee based, family-owned company that has been in business for a little over 30 years.

“We consider ourselves a community partner, not just a vendor. So if we were to take over service we'll be in this town on a regular basis doing things, helping you guys with your Corn Fest and, you know, anything else that you do. We'll be there to try to help to blend in financially and also have our marketing team here to help support those things on the ground,” Tommy Legins, Executive Vice President of RaeKar stated.

“We have supported Corn Fest for the last two years. We've done Teacher Appreciation Day in the county, and Sharon was included in that also. So there's things that we're doing over here already, even though we're not the vendor of choice here yet. Our customer is our priority, and we are a customer-focused company in all divisions that we have,” Legins said.

Legins promised resolution of issues within a 24–48-hour time period and making visits to city hall on a quarterly basis.

Legins stated that RaeKar’s residential rates were 52 cents higher, but that commercial and residential rates combined were $7,100 less per year and over a 5-year contract $61,000 less per 5 years.

“You don't talk about beautification a lot when you talk about garbage. But we're going to invest in all new carts and all new dumpsters. So each resident will have a brand-new blue cart with the phone number on the side. All the dumpsters in town will be replaced with brand new dumpsters,” Legins said.

The start date for Sharon’s new trash service will be Nov. 1.

NEWSNOTES:

BULK TRASH PICKUP: The city of Sharon will now charge $25 per item left on the curb if the city has to pick it up.