Agenda Item:
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Discussion of the Village's Solid Waste, Recycling & Organics Franchise Agreement with Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS)
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Staff Contact: Monica Sarna, Public Works Director, Jen Maddux, Management Analyst
Purpose and Actions Requested: Staff requests Village Board discussion of the Village's Solid Waste, Recycling and Organics Franchise Agreement with Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS).
Budget Impact: Not Applicable
Strategic Priority Addressed: Economic Vitality, Community Resilience
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BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS
Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) has served as the Village's solid waste hauler since 2017, under two successive franchise agreements, providing garbage, recycling, and yard waste collection services along with some special programs, including the annual spring clean-up day. The current agreement was executed in November 2022 and expires December 31, 2026. The Village now has a defined window to negotiate a renewal or pursue a competitive bid process.
Staff analyzed comparable LRS franchise agreements in peer communities to understand the terms LRS has already agreed to elsewhere; met with staff in those communities to learn from their real-world experience administering those contracts, including what has and has not worked; and consulted the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) for a broader view of regional trends, pricing, and best practices. Currently, staff is evaluating whether to pursue a renewal or competitive bid process, but has continued to work closely with LRS.
Staff have met with LRS on multiple occasions to convey a clear set of preliminary priorities and asked LRS to respond with the specific commitments it was prepared to put into contract language for any potential renewal. LRS reaffirmed the value it places on its partnership with the Village and indicated they are eager to continue serving the Village into the future. As such, they delivered a written framework in response, summarized below. The one significant piece still outstanding is pricing, which LRS has deferred pending its own cost analysis.
LRS Proposal
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Contract Provision |
LRS Proposal |
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Bulk items |
One bulk item per week, defined by existing contract language. Two bulk items per week, if the annual Spring Clean-Up Day is eliminated. |
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GCSF (General Collection Services Fee) |
Tighter standards for fee remittance, with a penalty for fees submitted beyond the due date. Additional pricing incentives if the Village takes over responsibility for collecting the fee. |
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Customer Service Standards |
Updated service and customer-service standards with identifiable metrics and KPIs, backed by per-occurrence fines (for example, missed pickups not cured by the next business day, and slow response to calls or emails). |
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Low-Volume Rates |
Will provide ideas for a low-volume rate. |
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Business District 7-Day Service |
Will include as part of its obligations on a seasonal basis, per the Village's request. |
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Pricing Structure |
To be provided for the Village's review, citing considerable fuel and inflation headwinds. |
During the July 16, 2026 Committee of the Whole, staff will guide a conversation with the Village Board on the topics outlined below to help guide future discussions with LRS. Staff has framed the following as directions to pursue rather than final terms because several items depend on pricing the Village has not yet received.
Preserve what is working
Much of the current agreement works well and if renegotiated, should be carried forward into any renewal. Staff recommend preserving the elements residents rely on and value, including:
• The General Collection Services Fee (GCSF) structure, which lets LRS collect and remit a monthly fee that funds community-wide services such as disposal costs, the annual spring clean-up day, and fall leaf collection, while tightening the remittance mechanics.
• The Hardship Program which provides residents who are physically unable to bring materials to the curb with top-of-drive service at the standard curbside rate, an equity provision staff would preserve and potentially enhance.
• Seasonal suspension of service allowing residents to pause service during extended winter absences.
• No-cost cart change-outs so residents can right-size or replace their carts without penalty.
• No-cost collection at municipal and public locations including Village facilities, the golf course, and downtown and right-of-way receptacles.
Bulk-item service and the annual spring clean-up day
LRS has offered a weekly bulk-item allowance, and a more generous two-item weekly allowance if the Village discontinues its annual spring clean-up day. A year-round weekly allowance could be simpler and more convenient for residents than a single collection day, and LRS has noted the clean-up day is difficult to staff safely and draws material from outside the community. However, residents like the clean-up day. In the 2023 survey it was among the highest-rated services in the entire program, with 90% satisfied.
Staff see room to be creative rather than treating this as an all-or-nothing trade, including phasing in a weekly allowance alongside the clean-up day to gauge resident response, or shifting to a fall clean-up day paired with a weekly allowance. Staff would model the cost of the current clean-up day before recommending any path.
Lower-cost and right-sized service
Staff have received notice of interest from some residents in service options for those who produce less waste. Some communities offer different rates for different cart sizes, and a few add discounts for seniors or lower-income residents. LRS has offered to develop low-volume rate concepts as part of the renewal. Options the Board may wish staff to consider include strengthening the existing Hardship Program, a less-frequent pickup option for low-waste households, and a small-cart or low-volume rate that charges residents more in proportion to what they set out. Beyond affordability, a low-volume rate also advances the Village's sustainability goals by giving residents a financial reason to reduce waste.
Rate structure and predictability
LRS has signaled its pricing will reflect fuel and inflation pressures, so the Village should expect rates to rise. Historically, Glencoe has tied annual increases to the Chicago-area Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the current agreement caps increases at 5% with no floor. Several peer communities have recently negotiated more favorable and more predictable structures. Levers the Board may wish staff to pursue include a lower maximum annual increase than the current 5% cap, a defined multi-year schedule of increases rather than year-to-year CPI, and a request that LRS commit to an electric refuse collection vehicle, which could reduce exposure to fuel-price volatility over time and advance the Village's sustainability goals. These could be pursued individually or negotiated together.
Sustainability and waste diversion
Several of the choices above are also sustainability choices, and residents have consistently identified waste diversion as a priority. It is also a central focus of the Sustainability Action Plan now under development, which is expected to set measurable goals for increasing organics diversion and reducing total waste. The upcoming waste hauler contract is a rare opportunity to align the Village's actions with those goals before they are formally adopted. The clearest opportunity here is organics. Today, participation is low, and a per-use yard-waste sticker program adds cost and friction that likely suppresses it further. Building unlimited organics collection into the base service rate, as some peer communities have done, would remove that barrier, simplify the resident experience, and directly serve the diversion goals residents have prioritized. This approach would require adding another collection bin at each participating household and could be structured with an opt-out option for residents who do not wish to participate, and it remains subject to the pricing implications of the renewal.
Contact renewal or competitive procurement
A negotiated renewal with LRS preserves continuity and avoids the disruption and cost of a transition, provided the terms and pricing are right. A competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) could test the wider market but carries a longer timeline and transition risk. Peer communities that recently negotiated strong terms with LRS did so, in part, by being genuinely willing to go to bid. Staff are seeking the Board's guidance on pursuing a competitive process if upcoming negotiations do not produce acceptable terms.
Accountability and customer service
At staff’s urging, LRS has proposed enforceable customer-service standards with metrics and per-occurrence penalties. Generally, attaching financial consequences to service failures is appealing. Staff's central concern is enforcement, which has not been defined. It is not yet clear who would verify each missed pickup, how disputes would be resolved, or how the Village would track occurrences without taking on significant new administrative work. A penalty the Village cannot practically enforce offers residents little real protection. For staff, the more valuable commitment is robust, consistent monthly reporting from LRS, so that accountability rests on transparency the Village can act on rather than on a penalty process that is difficult to administer. Customer service concerns are outlined below.
Customer Service Considerations
In the Village's 2023 Community Survey, 92% of residents with an opinion rated garbage collection “very satisfied” or “satisfied,” and 91% said the same of recycling collection. Those marks placed Glencoe far above regional and national benchmarks, where satisfaction with the same services sat closer to 60-70%. Reliable, high-quality waste collection is something residents notice, value, and expect. Over the past two years, however, the resident experience has deteriorated, and the level of staff resources dedicated to coordinating resolution is no longer acceptable.
Even at the height of resident satisfaction, the customer service experience with LRS itself lagged. In the 2023 survey, LRS customer service was the lowest-rated core service in the entire waste program, at 73% satisfied, well below collection service satisfaction. In other words, residents have long been happy with the trucks showing up but are less confident in what happens when they need to reach someone. That was a soft spot in an otherwise strong program then and the area that has since become worse, which may be due in part to LRS customer service operations not keeping up with its service expansion across the region.
Staff have absorbed the impact directly, fielding a steadily growing volume of calls, emails, and in-person visits from residents reporting missed pickups and long hold times when they try to reach LRS. What began as occasional friction has become a recurring source of frustration for residents and a persistent draw on staff time. A review of LRS-provided customer-service contacts dating back to the beginning of 2024 found that missed pickups have become the single largest category of resident contact, a meaningful share of the community (about 17.5%) logged at least one missed pickup, and a smaller group of households has experienced repeated misses.
Beyond handling the day-to-day resident contacts, staff has treated the expiring contract not as a routine renewal but as an opportunity to address the underlying problems. The guiding instinct throughout has been that the most durable fix for missed pickups is not simply a larger penalty after the fact, but a service design that produces fewer failures and gives residents clearer, more reliable ways to get help when something does go wrong.
RECOMMENDATION
Staff is eager for the Board’s input on the items above. Once staff receives a pricing proposal from LRS, we will complete a financial analysis. Staff intend to bring a recommended course of action back to the Board this fall, in time to either finalize a renewal or, if necessary, initiate a competitive procurement. Should negotiations require more time, a short-term extension of the current agreement by mutual consent, an approach the Village used successfully when the prior agreement expired in 2022, remains available as a bridge and would avoid any interruption in service.
ATTACHMENTS
1. 2026 Village of Glencoe LRS Garbage, Recycling, and Organics Collection Services
2. Letter from LRS Re: LRS / VOG Residential Waste, Recycling and Organics Renewal
3. Current franchise agreement between the Village of Glencoe and LRS