Sylvania Township trustees may finally decide next week if the township will hire a contractor for townshipwide refuse collection, which would close the door to participating in a countywide option being developed by Lucas County officials.

Action on the township proposal, about which the trustees have deliberated for the better part of a year, was on the agenda for a board meeting last week, but the three trustees agreed to postpone action until Tuesday after hearing a presentation from Jim Shaw, Lucas County’s sanitary engineer, about countywide pickup.

But holding a vote next week still would put the trustees in the position of acting nine days before Lucas County opens bids for its proposal, which is centered on a county take-over of garbage collection in Toledo but would be available to other communities in the county as well.

John Jennewine, elected at last week’s meeting as the trustees’ new chairman, said the township should wait until Lucas County opens its bids.

Trustee Kevin Haddad, who made unified trash and recyclables collection a key part of his election campaign, had said the county’s likely rate would be higher than bids the township received last summer and would burden residents with the rotating collection-day schedule now used in Toledo to prevent paying overtime for work on holiday weeks.

But after Paul Rasmussen, an Allied Waste representative who spoke at the meeting, agreed to hold his company’s current bid until at least March 15, Mr. Haddad agreed to table the matter until then.

Last summer, the township received bids from Allied Waste Services and Waste Management Corp. that ranged between $130 and $160 annually per household for garbage and recycling pickup, with terms of three to five years and rates varying depending on the type of service and whether a fuel surcharge would apply if the price of diesel exceeds $3 per gallon.

While officials initially said residents would automatically be enrolled in such collection unless they signed an “opt-out” card, it has since been determined that everyone wishing to participate would have to sign up.

Mr. Rasmussen said that for the offer to stand, 95 percent of the township’s approximately 10,000 households would have to accept it.

Of 376 respondents to an informal survey the township conducted on its Web site last fall, 187 said they were opposed to any kind of townshipwide refuse collection, as did 22 of 31 who filled out paper questionnaires. But Mr. Haddad said he considered the survey results meaningless because only those opposed to the idea had an incentive to respond.

Mr. Shaw, meanwhile, said that if the county were not developing its own refuse-collection proposal, he would support the township’s plan.

His description of the county’s concept promoted the same benefits Mr. Haddad has cited: lower rates from the efficiency of picking up most, if not all, of a community’s trash with the same truck, less visual blight with a common collection day, and reduced truck noise and road damage.

First Published March 9, 2011, 4:23 a.m.