By Megan Ma

Los Altos residents will wait until at least 2008 before they have the option to use a single bin for their recyclable garbage. City leaders postponed the decision due to the high cost of implementing the change.

At Nov. 14 meeting, Los Altos City Councilmembers voted down single-stream recycling and called for lower bids than the Los Altos Garbage Company (LAGCO) submitted.

“Some residents prefer (the carts) because they can recycle everything in one place,” Assistant Public Works Director Jim Gustafson said.

Requests from residents eager to switch to single carts prompted city staff to evaluate the change, Gustafson said.

The proposed 64-gallon carts would handle all recyclables,

including plastic bottles, mixed paper, newsprint, glass and metal.

Currently, city residents can use only the 18-gallons bins for recycling. Los Altos Hills residents use a combination of the 18-gallon bins and the 64-gallon single carts, which cost $65 each.

To implement the 64-gallon carts in 9,600 households would cost Los Altos approximately $870,000, which appears to be inordinately high, Gustafson said. The LAGCO-proposed rates would position Los Altos’ residential rates 17 percent to 24 percent higher than the Santa Clara County average.

Reconfiguration of the garbage trucks needed to service the larger carts would add to the cost. But it’s the already high garbage fees that have city leaders balking, according to Gustafson.

“The concern was that we don’t know if the current rates are market-based,” he said.

The city will solicit bids from different garbage companies for handling the proposed carts during the next few years, Gustafson said.

Saratoga and Los Gatos will switch to the single recycling carts in March. Cupertino and Palo Alto already use the single recycling carts.