Whitefish is planning for the future of its recycling program by seeking a contractor that can handle collection of the materials, but also potentially assist in planning for a new central recycling site.

City Council last week approved seeking requests for bids looking for a company to manage its recycling program. The city recently approved a contract for garbage services with Republic Services, but decided to go out for bids separately on recycling.

The city is seeking a contractor that could manage a central recycling site for residential and commercial materials. And under an alternative option, the city is seeking bids for contractors to provide residential curbside recycling services for about 3,500 residents within the city.

About three years ago the city began looking into creating curbside recycling, but Public Works Director Craig Workman said after the market dropped for plastic recycling that became unfeasible.

“What we’re doing is taking bids on two separate and distinct services with the intention of moving forward with one of the two options — curbside recycling or a central recycling site,” Workman said. “The purpose is to get bids from contractors allowing us to determine the most cost-effective way to provide recycling services to the community.”

The city has plans to move its central recycling site later this year as the current site on the snow lot is set to be developed into affordable workforce housing. The city is planning to move its recycling site to near the city’s parks maintenance building on Monegan Road.

The recycling program would be expected to accept flattened cardboard and paperboard, aluminium, tin and steel cans, newspaper, magazines, office paper, catalogs and junk mail. In addition, contractors will be asked to provide alternate bids to accept No. 1 and No. 2 plastics.

Workman said there might not be a marketplace for recycled plastic, so the contract would require that unless it’s not feasible.

The city’s current central recycling site sees about 700 tons annually of recycled materials.

If a new site is constructed that would happen in the spring, and then in mid-2021 the contractor would begin operating the recycling program from the new location.

The contractor would be responsible for providing recycling services for three years.

While the move to the new site would mean the recycling site is farther away from downtown, Workman said the site has some benefits.

“It does include the ability to expand. We want the ability to add additional quantities and add materials if it becomes possible to add something like glass recycling in the future,” he said. “We feel like this location offers the best alternative for the city.”

The new site is planned to be gated and open from dusk to dawn.

Workman said while it’s not feasible at this time to have an attendant at the site, the hope is that by not having the site open 24 hours a day, it will eliminate some of the issues that have occurred at the current site with people dumping items that should have been taken to the landfill.

Regarding the snow lot at Columbia Avenue and Railway Street, the city last summer gave the property to the Whitefish Housing Authority to develop into an affordable housing project. An analysis of the property found that roughly 24 single-family homes could be constructed in duplex-style buildings on the property.