Waste Management municipal marketing manager Michael Morley said after the meeting that he told the council the contract is the “most comprehensive” in the Chicago region because it adds “At Your Door” while increasing the rate of recycling pickup and maintains a range of services Joliet already gets. Services already in place include pickup of tires, refrigerators and other white goods, and even dead animals found in the city parkways and streets – a service that Morley called “completely unique to Joliet.”

Still, city staff was asked to see whether they could negotiate alley pickup service for residents willing to pay more to get it.

Quillman said complaints have not gone away since the last contract, when Waste Management stopped going into alleys except for those areas where street parking was considered too dense for curbside service.

“Some of the neighborhoods get it,” Quillman said, “and some in the same neighborhood don’t.”

Bringing back all the alley service that was there before would add a monthly unit cost of $1.17 to the contract, interim City Manager Marty Shanahan said.