The City of Oklahoma City (City) provides solid waste collection and disposal services to approximately 645,000 people, with contractor-provided collection service to about 60% of the customer base and City in-house-provided collection service to about 40% of the customer base. Collection services primarily include refuse, recycling, and bulky waste. The City is also responsible for a number of solid waste programs, from neighborhood clean-ups, household hazardous waste, rural recycling convenience centers, street sweeping, and others. Raftelis recently assisted the City through the performance of a formal Cost of Service rate study and financial forecast model. Key elements of the engagement included: i) providing recommendations concerning rate revenue adjustments over a 10-year period, including modeling of fleet replacement and identifying capital needs; ii) providing recommendations concerning the establishment of cash reserves for operating, capital, force majeure, cart, and other reserves; and iii) identification of the cost of service for several of the City’s key services including, bulky waste collection, recycling, illegal dumping and litter collection, and flow fee design. Raftelis assisted the City in modeling cart and fleet replacement cycles. Raftelis recently assisted the City in determining the cost of in-housing certain contracted operations including solid waste collections of the franchise area and bulky waste collections. To analyze the cost of in-housing certain contracted operations, Raftelis identified the key operating costs, including but not limited to the incremental costs associated with additional collection routing requirements, staffing, equipment and vehicles, carts, fuel, and stakeholder outreach.
