Advanced Disposal has opted not to renew its contract with the city of Selma for garbage collection when it ends in January.

The company opted to not renew the contract because they are losing money. Advanced Disposal representatives told city council members Tuesday that half of the 6,000 customers the company serves in Selma don’t pay their bills.

“Advanced Disposal sent a letter to the city several months ago making them aware of our decision to not renew the contract as it is currently written and for the city to prepare to put the contract out for competitive bid,” said Mary O’Brien, chief marketing officer for Advanced Disposal.

According to O’Brien, people not paying for garbage collection has been a problem since Advanced Disposal started servicing Selma in 2013.

“Unfortunately, we incur significant expenses with our trucks, our fuel, our employees and the carts themselves to provide solid waste services, and we need to be paid for it,” O’Brien said. “Unfortunately, there was a high number of residents in Selma that have chosen not to pay us for this service, and we can’t continue operating under those scenarios.”

O’Brien said Advanced Disposal is willing to bid for Selma’s service again as long as it makes changes to the contract.

“We would be happy to bid again when the new proposal comes out, but we can’t renew it under the existing pricing structure and contractual language as it is written today,” O’Brien said.

“We believe the city has, through property taxes, a means of collecting it more easily than we do, but whether or not they are willing to do that, I can’t answer for the city.”

O’Brien said Advanced Disposal has made the city aware that the billing process needs to be changed in order for them to rebid.

“One of the provisions of the existing contract we would like to see changed in particular is the subscription nature of the service,” O’Brien said. “We have to bill the customers, and we would hope that the city would consider having the city bill the customers.”

O’Brien said the company has also had issues collecting garbage bins when customers fail to pay for their service.

“They belong to us, so when we’re not paid for services we go back and collect the carts,” O’Brien said. “Sometimes we run into resistance from the residents in collecting our own carts.”

The city’s current contract with Advanced Disposal will end in January, and it won’t be renewed unless something is changed on the city’s end of the deal.

“We’re hoping that we can keep the contract with them,” said Selma Mayor George Evans. “We’ve got to come up with an idea on how they can get their money, and whether or not it will go up.”

Evans and Selma City Council members discussed the issued at Tuesday’s council meeting, but a new proposal is still a work in progress.

“We have not agreed to anything, but we do know that they cannot continue to pick up garbage based on everybody not paying, and they can’t pick it up for the same $15,” Evans said. “The question is, can we work to get people to pay for the garbage so it won’t go up, or do we have to go up?”

The city’s other options would be to award the contract to another garbage collection company or take over the service, but Evans said that latter is not really an option.

Before Advanced Disposal started servicing the city in 2013, the city collected garbage.

“I don’t know how we would do that. I don’t think at this point that the city is in a place to take it back over,” Evans said. “We sold our trucks, and we sold our carts, so right now that is not something that we can do at this point. Even if we did take it back over, somebody has got to pay.”

Evans said the city has done that before, so he doesn’t see how they could do it again.

“We just couldn’t do it. We were unable to manage it and as a result we outsourced it,” Evans said. “We needed three to four more trucks, and the trucks we had were breaking down every week. Outsourcing the service was a great option. It is just a matter of getting people to pay for garbage collection.”