Megan Navarro
BUDA — Buda City Council held a workshop during its Sept. 2 meeting to discuss the city’s current solid waste and recycling services.
The city offers residential weekly trash, bi-weekly recycling, bi-weekly green waste and quarterly bulk-waste pickup through its contract with Texas Disposal Systems (TDS), who has served as the city of Buda’s provider since the '90s. TDS was most recently selected to provide services to residents and businesses in 2016, following the solicitation process, and a new five-year contract was negotiated in 2021.
According to city manager Micah Grau’s presentation to council, the city of Buda’s five-year term with TDS expires Sept. 30, 2026. The city has the option to do the following: renew the contract for an additional term, renew and renegotiate aspects of the contract or terminate the contract and conduct a solicitation to select another provider.
While the term does not expire until later next year, if council were to choose a new provider, the transition could take six to nine months, Grau said. Additionally, the TDS contract requires the city to provide an advanced notice of 180 days — April 3, 2026 — if it intends to terminate the agreement.
“Any time there is a change-out with a solid waste provider, it is a lengthy process. If the council wants us to go through a request for proposals, that will take three months minimum and there is a change-over that has to happen with the company,” Grau explained. “They have to order new trucks, new equipment and coordinate the placement of new carts if that change was to happen.”
The city hosted an online survey from July to August to seek feedback from Buda customers on their TDS service, garnering 462 residential and five commercial responses. There were several questions answered in the survey, but some of the highlights that Grau presented include:
• Out of two responses on the question, two commercial users noted that they are very dissatisfied with the services they receive from TDS
• Out of two responses on the question, one residential user said they are satisfied with the scheduling options offered by TDS, while one commercial user said they are very dissatisfied.
• When asked what services they regularly use, out of 375 who answered, 100% use the weekly trash service, nearly 90% use the bi-weekly recycling, approximately 35% use the quarterly bulk pick-up and less than 20% use the free disposal at the TDS landfill.
• Approximately 45% said they somewhat feel like they are informed about the TDS services, while 20% said no and approximately 37% said yes.
• The majority of customers want to learn more about quarterly bulk waste (55%) and landfill disposal services (a little less than 50%).
• The majority also said they were satisfied, very satisfied or neither satisfied/dissastified with TDS’ customer service
Council member Evan Ture said that it can be difficult to get a statistical analysis from a few commercial customers and asked if there are any key proposed responses or notes related to the commercial services from TDS.
Ja-Mar Prince, a representative of TDS, responded that there is always an opportunity to enhance the educational part of what they do to help customers better understand how TDS can service them and how they are attempting to service them. He also agreed with Ture, stating that getting two responses from the survey is very difficult to capitalize on: “When I was going to school, we were taught that if something is negative, a person would go and tell eight individuals. If something is positive, they would tend to remain mum, so I think this may be one of those instances.”
The item was brought into executive session, but council ultimately did not take any action.
Also during the meeting, council unanimously voted to adopt an ordinance on first and final reading, declaring the candidate for Council Member At-Large Position 1, incumbent Matt Smith, as elected, due to being the only individual who filed for the seat.
Buda City Council meets next at 6 p.m. Sept. 16.
