The Mower County Board of Commissioners is one step closer to deciding whether to adopt single-sort recycling.

The county has received two bids from area waste companies. Waste Management bid about $821,000 to offer curbside pickup to all county properties, while Advanced Disposal bid about $641,000 to cover curbside pickup in all Mower County cities, along with pickup at special sites.

Mower County Coordinator Craig Oscarson told the board during a public meeting Tuesday Advanced Disposal’s bid may not qualify under state bidding practices. The board initially bid out the project and added several alternates last month, one of which was to see whether companies would pick up recycling from townships if residents dropped recycling off at eight sites.

Advanced Disposal’s base bid didn’t cover the cost of curbside pickup to all properties, but instead covered the costs of picking up at eight sites throughout the county. In addition, Advanced Disposal proposed expanding to 20 sites through its alternate bid.

Last month, the county opened bidding for waste contractors to pick up all household single-sort recycling in the county to then transfer to a sorting site, but county staff voiced concerns about the cost of countywide residential pickup.

To potentially limit the expected increases, one alternate would only feature residential pickup in incorporated cities, and rural homeowners would have to take their recycling to drop boxes maintained by the contractor.

The other two alternates explore if a transfer station or staging area — either at the current Mower County Recycling Center or the Austin Transfer Station — would decrease the costs for contractors who’d have to haul the trash a greater distance to a sorting center.

Neither company bid on using a transfer station, but Waste Management did bid on conforming to city of Austin requests, which included electronic recycling and tree pickup, among other things.

“What that says to us is there’s no benefit to either bidder to use that waste transfer site,” Oscarson told the board.

The county’s solid waste committee was set Tuesday afternoon to calculate if the bids would be a good value for homeowners.

Though much of community feedback has favored switching to single-sort recycling, county officials voiced concerns about the cost — especially with countywide single-sort pickup at residential properties. Residences pay $16 to $18 a year for sorted recycling as part of county property taxes, whether they recycle or not. The single-sort fee would also come off property taxes, but county officials previously estimated it could cost $4.25 to $5 a month — $51 to $60 a year.

To that end, county officials want to be sure moving forward on single-sort recycling will be accepted by county residents.

“We want feedback from the public to move ahead with this thing,” Commissioner Jerry Reinartz said.