photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Charlie Sedlock of Hamm addresses the Lawrence City Commission on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.

Lawrence city leaders at their meeting Tuesday gave their consent to the sale of Hamm Landfill to a nationwide waste disposal company.

The commission voted 4-0, with Commissioner Mike Dever absent, to authorize City Manager Craig Owens to sign letters of consent to the sale of Hamm Landfill and Hamm Material Recovery Facility, which processes recycling, to Allied Waste Systems.

The reason the city had to consent was that the sale included its contract for service with Hamm. The City of Lawrence has two agreements with Hamm for use of the landfill and for recycling services, which among other things spell out the rates the city pays. Both agreements can’t be assigned to another party without written consent, which “shall not be unreasonably withheld or delayed.”

On Tuesday, Mayor Brad Finkeldei asked Mike Lawless, deputy director of the city’s Municipal Services and Operations, whether the sale would change the contract in any way, and Lawless said it would not.

The company Hamm is selling the facilities to, Allied Waste Systems, is a subsidiary of a nationwide company called Republic Services, which operates hundreds of waste disposal facilities across the U.S. Charlie Sedlock, of Hamm Companies, told the commission that the new owner might be able to do some things, such as selling recycling materials, better than Hamm does now because of its larger scale.

“In terms of continually finding markets for recycling material, they’re going to be better than we are,” Sedlock said.

Commissioners had a few questions about the change. Vice Mayor Mike Courtney asked whether this was a step toward privatizing Lawrence’s solid waste collection services, and Lawless said there were no plans to do that.

And both Courtney and Commissioner Kristine Polian said they would be interested in re-evaluating the contract, which currently has a 3.5% annual increase in the tipping fees the city pays to use the landfill. Polian said she didn’t like the year-to-year nature of the contract, and that she would prefer a longer term.

“Any contract that I’ve been a part of that is a recurring service, I’ve tried to lock in three to five years,” she said.

Finkeldei, however, stressed that the question before the city right now wasn’t about the terms of the contract, but whether there were reasonable grounds for withholding the city’s consent to the sale.

“To me, this is not the time to have that discussion” about negotiations, Finkeldei said.

The city’s contract for landfill services with Hamm has been in place since December 1992 and has had two updates since then, in 2010 and 2019. And the city has contracted for recycling services with Hamm since April 2013; its current agreement for these services was approved in October 2022.