RINCON — The Rincon City Council took care of a pair of  urgent matters during a special called meeting Monday night. One of them qualified as an actual emergency.

With a 72-hour state of emergency that was declared by Mayor Ken Lee on the verge of expiring, the council, acting in a conference call, passed an ordinance to extend it until April 30. The declaration largely follows state and federal guidelines for social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The parameters of Lee’s declaration were modified slightly as the new measure will allow customers to enter a restaurant to pick up their food as long as their entrance doesn’t cause the occupancy of the building to exceed 10 people or prevent those inside from having a social distance of six feet.

Restaurants are currently limited to curbside or take takeout service.

Waste Pro emerged as the unanimous pick for the city’s residential trash collection. It will supplant Waste Management starting May 1.

The council OK’d a five-year contract with two options for an additional five years. The new monthly collection fees for residents swill be $9.24 for trash and $5.25 for recycling.

Residents are currently charged a total of $16.83 a month for those services that are provided by Waste Management. Waste Management joined Waste Pro and Atlantic Waste Services as bidders.

“All three of the bids were competitive and it was obvious the three companies spent a lot of time and effort in putting together the most competitive bid that was possible for them,” City Manager John Klimm said. “On behalf of the citizens on Rincon, and certainly the city council, I want to publicly thank all three of the businesses that sent really solid proposals in for our consideration. At the end of the day, the winner is really our citizens because of the competition that went on for the bids.

“I’d like to also state that Waste Management has served this community for years. Not only in a general sense was there a bundle of satisfaction in their service, I wanted to publicly that (community and municipal relations manager) Russell Hightower, who on many, many occasions, made himself available to our staff. I want to publicly thank him for his dedicated service to the citizens of Rincon.”

Per the new deal, residents will have the option to call Waste Pro to have their curbside yard trimmings picked up for $10. Additional details will be provided soon.

The trash collection and recycling fees are locked for the first three years of the Waste Pro arrangement. After that period, any increase would be linked to the Consumer Price Index and capped 1.5 percent per year.