On Tuesday afternoon, 18 August 2026, the Dothan City Commission voted on the first increase to the city’s residential sanitation fee in more than a decade. The vote came back 3–3. A tie is not a majority, so the measure failed. Nothing was decided, nothing changed, and the monthly bill stayed exactly where it has been since 2013.
If you rent dumpsters for a living — which we do — that meeting was not really about a five-dollar increase. It was the clearest public accounting anyone in Dothan has given of what the city’s waste system actually costs to run, and what happens to the things it currently picks up for free if that gap is ever closed. Whether or not you agree with the proposal, the numbers presented that day are worth reading, because they describe the direction this is heading regardless of how one vote landed.
Below is what was on the table, what was said, what did not change, and the part almost nobody covered: the same week that vote failed, the city’s landfill was already working through a permitted expansion from 53.6 acres to 88.2 acres. We have cited every figure to the source it came from, and there is a list at the bottom of the things we could not confirm and are not going to guess at.
What actually happened on 18 August
WTVY reported the outcome the same afternoon:
“Commissioner Phillipe Kirksey was absent from the meeting, leaving the vote tied 3-3. The tie meant nothing was decided.”
WTVY, 18 August 2026
That single absence is the whole story of the vote. Dothan’s commission seats a mayor plus six district commissioners. With one commissioner away, the body split evenly and the ordinance died where it stood.
One vote is on the record by name. WTVY reported that Commissioner Bradley Bedwell, District 3, voted no, citing timing. Bedwell had already said so publicly two weeks earlier:
“My vote will be a hard no, based on that factor, plus what I am hearing from the residents in my district.”
Commissioner Bradley Bedwell, WTVY, 5 August 2026
He added, in the same coverage: “I think we should reduce our expenses, before raising the city’s revenue.”
We are not going to publish a roll call. Other commissioners were quoted before and after the meeting describing their positions, but a quoted opinion in a news story is not a recorded vote. Beyond Bedwell’s, no individual vote from that meeting was explicitly reported in any source we could reach, and the official minutes were not available to us. Three voted to raise the fee and three voted against. That is as far as the evidence goes, and it is as far as we are going to go.
The numbers that were on the table
The proposal was not a single jump. It was a four-year ladder followed by an indexed increase, and it is worth seeing laid out, because the headline “$5.25 increase” badly undersells what was actually being voted on.
| Effective date | Proposed monthly residential rate |
|---|---|
| Current (since 2013) | $14.75 |
| 1 October 2026 | $20.00 |
| 1 October 2027 | $25.00 |
| 1 October 2028 | $30.00 |
| 1 October 2029 | $35.00 |
| 1 October 2030 onward | increases 3.5% annually |
| Second cart (new fee) | $10.00/month, rising 3.5%/yr ($10.35, $10.71, $11.09) |
That is a rate that roughly doubles inside three years and then indexes upward permanently. Wiregrass Daily News reported the same schedule and put the number of affected households at 26,913.
The service changes attached to it mattered as much as the money:
- Curbside recycling would have been eliminated. Residents would instead drop recyclables at the city landfill or at the former Air National Guard armory.
- Bulk waste pickup would have moved to a call-in system rather than the current arrangement.
- A minimum fee for non-compliant materials was reported as part of the package. See our note on that figure in the unverified section — it appeared in one outlet only and we could not confirm it against a city document.
Why the city says the current fee does not work
Public Works Director Tommy Wright put the operating cost in plain terms the day before the vote:
“It’s actually costing the city $36 per person. That includes all your fuel costs, fleet costs, personnel costs.”
Tommy Wright, Public Works Director, WSFA, 17 August 2026
A caution on that figure, because it matters if you are going to repeat it. WSFA quoted Wright saying per person. WTVY, covering the same proposal, described the same gap as being “over $35 per household” monthly. Those are different units and we cannot reconcile them from the public reporting. The safe way to state it is the way both outlets agree on: city officials put the true monthly cost somewhere above $35–$36, against the $14.75 residents actually pay.
The consequence of that gap is the part that has been consistent across every story:
The solid waste fund “drains more than $6 million annually from the general fund.”
WTVY, 3 August 2026 and 17 August 2026
And cumulatively:
“City leaders say the solid waste fund has drained $65 million from Dothan’s general fund since 2013.”
WTVY, 18 August 2026
A larger number — $150 million — also appeared in the coverage, and it deserves accurate attribution. That figure is Commissioner Gantt Pierce’s projection of where the cumulative drain could reach over the next decade if nothing changes. It is a commissioner’s forecast, not a finance department statement, and it is a ten-year figure, not an open-ended one.
Whatever you make of the proposal, the arithmetic behind it is not really in dispute. A fee that has not moved since 2013 is being asked to cover fuel, fleet replacement and personnel at 2026 prices. The general fund — which is to say every other city service — covers the difference.
What did NOT change on 18 August
This is the practical part, and it is the part the headlines skipped. Because the vote failed, every one of the following is still true today:
- The residential sanitation fee is still $14.75 a month, the rate in place since 2013.
- Curbside recycling still runs. It was the proposal that would have ended it, and the proposal failed.
- Bulk waste pickup has not moved to a call-in system.
- There is no second-cart fee.
- No annual indexed increase is scheduled.
That is the good news, and it is genuinely good news for anyone planning a cleanout in the next few months. It is also, on the evidence presented at that meeting, a temporary condition. A $6 million annual gap does not close because a vote tied. It comes back, and when it comes back it will most likely come back with the same service reductions attached, because those reductions are how the city proposed to bring the cost down rather than only raising the price.
The story underneath the story: the landfill is getting bigger
Almost none of the coverage connected the fee vote to the thing that explains a good deal of the cost pressure. The City of Dothan Sanitary Landfill operates under ADEM Solid Waste Permit 35-06. According to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s own public notice, the facility has been working through a renewal with a major modification:
The disposal area expands from “53.6 acres to 88.2 acres” — an addition of “20.5 acres of MSW and 14.1 acres of C/D” on a site of roughly 506.67 permitted acres.
ADEM public notice, City of Dothan Sanitary Landfill, Permit 35-06
ADEM held the public hearing at the Dothan Civic Center, 126 N. Saint Andrews Street, on 22 May 2025 at 6:00 p.m., with a comment deadline of 29 May 2025.
ADEM’s master list of permitted municipal solid waste landfills records the facility at 400 tons per day, serving Houston County, the City of Dothan and the City of Headland. That service area is worth noticing. The Dothan landfill is not a regional facility for the whole Wiregrass. It serves one county and two cities.
Put the two facts side by side — a disposal area growing by roughly two thirds, and a collection fund losing six million dollars a year — and the direction of travel is not ambiguous.
If you live outside the city limits, none of this applied to you
This is the single most common confusion we hear on the phone, and the 18 August vote made it worse rather than better, because the coverage all said “Dothan” without saying which Dothan.
The City of Dothan and Houston County are two different governments running two different waste systems. If your address is in Rehobeth, Taylor, Cottonwood, Webb, Gordon, Ashford, Columbia or the unincorporated county, the commission vote on 18 August had nothing to do with your trash service. You are served by Houston County Sanitation, and their rules are published on the county’s own site.
Here is what the county says, in its own words:
“No. Any amount of yard debris will result in a charge. Our minimum charge is $50.00.”
Houston County Sanitation, FAQ
That is the answer to “will you pick up a small pile of limbs for free.” No, and the minimum is fifty dollars regardless of how small the pile is.
Household bulk is treated differently:
Free pickup of “Boxes, toys, household furnishings, appliances, etc.… As long as the pile is not greater than a 10×10 area.”
Houston County Sanitation, FAQ
So a 10-by-10 pile of household goods is collected at no charge, but a single armload of tree limbs starts at fifty dollars. That is not a mistake in the rules — yard debris and household bulk go to different places and cost the county different amounts to handle.
Two more county figures worth knowing:
- An additional can costs $125. The county states it as “a one-time payment of $125” per additional can.
- The county has no recycling program. Asked directly whether recycling is available, the answer published is simply “No.”
- Cans must be at the right of way by 6:00 a.m. on your pickup day.
Houston County Sanitation can be reached at 334-793-5442, with billing at 1691 Ross Clark Circle, Dothan, AL 36301.
The two systems side by side
| City of Dothan | Houston County | |
|---|---|---|
| Residential rate | $14.75/month (unchanged after the 18 Aug vote) | See county billing — see note below |
| Curbside recycling | Yes, still running | No program |
| Yard debris | City collection — see limits note | $50 minimum for any amount |
| Household bulk | Bulk pickup, not moved to call-in | Free up to a 10×10 pile |
| Extra can | No second-cart fee adopted | $125 one-time per additional can |
| Set-out time | See note | At the right of way by 6:00 a.m. |
| Phone | City of Dothan Public Works | 334-793-5442 |
The cells marked “see note” are deliberate. We could not retrieve the City of Dothan’s own code and service pages during this research — the city site blocked automated access and the Municode library returned no readable text. Rather than fill those in from a secondhand source, we have left them blank. Call the city before you rely on a number for the city side.
What this means if you have a project coming up
Three practical conclusions come out of all of the above, and none of them depend on how the next vote goes.
1. Free municipal collection is the most fragile part of the system
The proposal that failed did not only raise the price. It removed curbside recycling and restructured bulk pickup. Those are the two services most exposed whenever a waste fund runs a deficit, because they are the two that cost the most per household to deliver and are the easiest to point at. If you have been planning to lean on a bulk pickup for a garage clearout “sometime,“ that is a service worth using while the current arrangement holds.
2. Volume is where municipal collection stops working entirely
None of these systems are designed for a renovation. Houston County’s 10×10 free-pile allowance is a generous limit for household goods and a meaningless one for a bathroom gut. City collection is built around a cart at the curb. The moment you are producing drywall, tile, cabinets, roofing or a deck, you are outside what either government collects, and the question stops being “when do they come” and becomes “where does this legally go.”
3. Which side of the city line you are on changes the answer
This is the one that costs people money. A homeowner in Rehobeth and a homeowner four miles away inside the city limits do not have the same options, do not pay the same fees, and do not have the same recycling access. Every national dumpster-rental site treats “Dothan, AL” as one jurisdiction. It is two, and the difference is a fifty-dollar minimum on a pile of limbs.
What we could not verify
We would rather leave a gap than fill it with something plausible. These are the things we went looking for and could not confirm from a source we trust:
- Who voted which way, beyond Bedwell. Other commissioners were quoted describing their views before and after the meeting, but no source we could reach recorded their votes. The mayor’s vote is not reported anywhere we found. We are not inferring a roll call from arithmetic.
- Commissioner Kirksey’s district number. Reported as absent; his district was not stated.
- The minimum fee for non-compliant materials. One outlet reported a figure. No other outlet carried it and no city document was reachable to confirm it. We have described the provision without repeating the number.
- The text of Dothan’s solid waste ordinance. The city website blocked automated access and the Municode code library returned no readable text. Nothing in this article quotes the city code, because we could not read it.
- Official minutes of the 18 August 2026 meeting. Not retrievable at the time of writing. Everything about that meeting here comes from news reporting, attributed above.
- City of Dothan yard-waste limits, set-out times, right-of-way rules and container placement rules. Same access problem. Call the city.
- Current tipping fees at the Dothan landfill or any other Wiregrass facility. Permitted capacities are public; prices are not.
If a City of Dothan or Houston County document contradicts anything on this page, that document is right and we will correct this one.
Sources
- WTVY, “Dothan trash fee vote ends in tie, no increase now” (18 August 2026)
- WTVY, “Decision day: will commissioners hike Dothan solid waste fees?” (17 August 2026)
- WTVY, “Dothan solid waste overhaul: city weighs fee hikes, service cuts” (3 August 2026)
- WTVY, “Dothan commissioner calls proposed trash fee hike a hard no” (5 August 2026)
- WSFA, “Dothan commissioners vote Tuesday on first trash fee increase in more than a decade” (17 August 2026)
- Wiregrass Daily News, “Dothan proposes garbage fee increase, recycling changes” (9 August 2026)
- Houston County Sanitation — FAQ and Additional Can
- ADEM, public notice — City of Dothan Sanitary Landfill, Permit 35-06
- ADEM, Permitted Municipal Solid Waste Landfills master list
A note on method. Every sentence in quotation marks above was taken from the document or broadcast named beside it. Where two sources disagreed — the “per person” versus “per household” figure, and one article’s rounding of $14.75 to $14 — we have said so rather than picking the tidier number. Where we could not read a primary document, we have said that too.