LEWISTON – The city should extend its contract with Pine Tree Waste to collect curbside recycling for another two years, members of the city’s solid waste task force decided on Wednesday.

That will give the city time to figure out how to get more people to recycle, they said.

“It gives us more time to come up with something good, and not just jump into something we’ll regret rushing into later on down the road,” said committee member Michel Lajoie.

Pine Tree Waste, a subsidiary of Casella Solid Waste, collects all of the city’s curbside recycling. Rob Stalford, superintendent of the Solid Waste and Recycling division, said the city pays more than $700,000 per year to have Pine Tree Waste collect the materials. The contract keeps the same price, adjusted for inflation, for the next two years.

The group is looking for ways to increase the city’s recycling rate, which is about 7 percent. They’ve talked about moving to single-stream curbside recycling and possibly enforcing a city ordinance that levies a $210 fine for people who don’t recycle.

“There’s a lot we can do, but we can’t rush into anything,” Lajoie said. “Extending the contract gives us more time.”

Public Works Director Paul Boudreau said the new contract will go before councilors next.

Task force members said their only concern Wednesday was the contract, not questions about whether another Casella subsidiary, FCR Goodman, had inappropriately agreed to bring recyclables from another community into Lewiston.

“I don’t care one bit about what the company told people in another community,” said task force member Paul Fishman. “It seems to me the city administrator has this issue under control, and we just let him handle it.”

City officials said Casella cannot bring recyclable materials into Lewiston.

“I’m not aware of any permission to do that anywhere in the city,” City Administrator Jim Bennett said Monday.

Officials from Waterford, a town about 8 miles west of Norway, said last week that Casella officials planned to take up to 10 tons of unsorted recyclables at a plant in Lewiston. Voters in Waterford adopted a single-stream recycling plan this spring based on that understanding and approved the purchase of a $43,000 compactor to make it happen.

That came as a surprise to Lewiston officials. They confirmed Monday that Casella could not use the Lewiston landfill to take deliveries of any solid waste or recyclable materials from anywhere outside Lewiston.

The company cannot use the KTI Biofuels facility on Plourde Parkway, Bennett said. That property is leased to the Casella subsidiary but belongs to Lewiston – and Lewiston has final say on the use of it. The city has not approved using that property as a way station for solid waste or unsorted recyclables.

Officials from Waterford plan to ship their recyclable materials to Casella’s Scarborough plant. They will be repackaged and shipped to the company’s Auburn, Mass., plant, where they will be sorted and sold.

“It’s not really an imminent problem for us,” said Tony Butterall, chairman of Waterford’s transfer station committee. “We may have to work out a different deal on the pricing, since it’s a longer trip to Scarborough. But they’ve said they’ll find a place to take it.”