The Borough Council voted early Tuesday morning to drop a plan to privatize garbage collection after the proposal encountered enormous opposition by residents.

Hundreds of opponents filled the South River High School auditorium Monday night to hear borough officials present the plan, touted as a way to save the town more than $3 million over five years.

But after residents railed against the plan for more than five hours during a public-comment period, Councilman Anthony Razzano made a motion to reject the bids that would have put 80 percent of the borough's garbage collection under a private contract. Trash in the rest of town already is collected by a private service.

The council voted 3-1 in favor of the motion, with Councilwoman Suzanne Buffalino voting "no" and Councilman Jim Hutchinson abstaining. Council President John Krenzel was absent from the meeting and also did not vote.

With residents facing a 36.4-cent increase in their local property-tax rate, the proposal was to be part of the borough's five-year plan to stabilize taxes. Borough officials say they are being crunched by the disappearance of onetime revenues from previous years' budgets.

Privatization would have saved the borough about 14 tax points, or $605,865, per year, starting in 2009, according to Business Administrator Andrew Salerno.

Residents would not have been required to procure their own services if the plan was adopted. The entire borough would instead have been covered through a private contract with Central Jersey Waste, who was selected after a two-month bidding process, reducing the pickup cost from $171 to $54 per stop.

Salerno said municipal employees facing potential job losses would have been offered full-time jobs with the private company or relocated to another department.

But residents organized against the proposal in advance of the meeting, forcing the borough to change venues from the Criminal Justice Building to the 628-capacity high school auditorium.

"They should not be worried about the trash pickup. This is a small community," said Robert Kotora, a Rex Place resident who spoke six times at Monday's meeting. "They call it "Mouth River' instead of South River because everybody knows everybody's business here."

Opposition to the plan centered on concerns that service would suffer by outsourcing garbage pickup. Residents residents were also skeptical that displaced hometown employees would be taken care of.

"They absolutely did the right thing cause in the long run it's only going to hurt this town," said Kotora, a retired municipal employee.

About 20 percent of the borough is already served by private haulers. With that contract due to expire soon, the borough sought bids for the remainder of the borough.

The Borough Council's rejection of the bids effectively ends talks about privatization.

Razzano, the lone Democrat on the council, said he had been opposed to privatization beforehand but was spurred by the turnout.

"I went in there ready to argue against it, and the townspeople made most of the argument I was going to make," he said. "So it was a combination of the two."

The council will still consider a new contract for the part of town — the southern section, which includes several hundred apartments — where garbage pickup already is outsourced. That contract will be considered at a special meeting Monday.