Karnes City is contemplating the return of recycling services after receiving a large volume of feedback from citizens when the services disappeared October last year.

The city’s former trash collection contractor Waste Management also picked up recyclable materials from the city yard, but when they ended their contract with the city last October, the service disappeared.

Now city officials are in negotiations with the new contractor, IESI, and are seeking more feedback from citizens regarding what they’d like to see in terms of recycling and how much they’d be willing to pay for the service to be offered.

"Right now we are negotiating because I’ve had a lot of inquiries as to why we did away with recycling," City Administrator Larry Pippen said. "We’re supposed to come up with some type of program, I hope, within the next week or two weeks."

One of the big decisions is "whether we want to go full recycling with small containers for (individual residents) or go back to the way we had it with different bins at public works," Pippen went on to say.

City officials aren’t sure yet what the cost will be to Karnes City if leaders choose to adopt a new recycling program.

"They’re saying there’s really very little market for recycling materials … but since I’ve had so many inquiries I thought I’d better start negotiating. They’re going to look at their estimated costs to produce this and at the same time look at their estimated proceeds," Pippen said.

If the proceeds outweigh the costs, the program could end up costing the citizens nothing and might even return a few dollars that would go toward maintaining and upgrading the city park.

The figures are all up in the air right now, though, and Karnes City leaders are asking residents to contact City Hall with their opinions on the matter.

Residents are encouraged to visit this week’s online poll at www.thecountywide.com to weigh in on the topic.