The Poulsbo City Council approved at its Sept. 10 meeting to initiate the process of outsourcing solid waste services in efforts to be more cost-effective for rate payers.

The city has experienced significant increase in tipping fees, operations costs, insurance costs, recycling costs, and the expenditures to administer solid waste services now exceed revenues collected from rate payers, per city documents. City policy requires that city utilities operate with a balanced budget, including maintaining two months of operating reserves.

Earlier this year, the city hired Financial Consultant Services Group to reevaluate the financial condition of the solid waste utility in the present and the future to determine rate increases necessary to sustain the utility, which confirmed that the city is not able to compete with a professional provider of solid waste services, documents read.

The Public Works department will now begin the process of outsourcing solid waste services for city residents and bring back options for council consideration.

“It appears that it could be more cost-effective for the customer to outsource solid waste,” Public Works director Diane Lenius said. “The reason for that is because a larger entity or specialized entity that performs solid waste services can potentially do it much more cost-effectively than a small city that also manages water, sewer, transportation, facilities and everything else that we do.”