Kansas City, your trash carts are coming.

Last year, most KC households got blue 65-gallon recycling carts with yellow lids, whether they wanted them or not. Some people living on slender lots with no place to store the carts returned them, but most people found the carts convenient, city officials said, because the lids kept recyclables from blowing all over their neighborhoods.

This year, the city plans to complete the set with matching blue trash carts, although they will have gray lids so you can tell them apart.

They also will be 65 gallons — big enough to hold five trash bags of garbage, which is three more than residents are now allowed to pile on the curb on trash day every week, hoping that raccoons, oposums and stray dogs won’t tear into them, leaving the neighborhood messy.

City officials are making this possible by finally finding money to pay for the carts. While there was no money in the budget approved last spring, some mid-year adjustments did the trick. The city pieced together leftover money from its general fund, pulling from various things that didn’t cost as much as originally planned.

The trash cart roll-out was set in motion on Thursday when the City Council voted unanimously to spend $8.5 million for the purchase of 170,000 carts. They are supposed to begin arriving in May, with all eligible residents receiving them by October.

Nearly all single-family houses and apartment building with six units or fewer will receive the wheeled containers free of charge. Residents of larger apartment complexes won’t get them because big multi-family developments don’t get the city’s free trash pickup service.

Renters either pay a separate fee, or it’s part of their rent, which Councilman Eric Bunch said is an inequity he hears about frequently.

Those who won’t get new carts are folks who live in 10 neighborhoods that were part of an 18-year-old pilot program that never expanded. About 12,000 trash carts in those areas are already being picked up weekly by trucks with mechanical arms or cart tippers on their rear end.

Many suburban communities long ago adopted that method of trash and recycling pickup to save costs. Only one person is needed to drive the truck and operate the mechanical arm. But due to narrow streets with cars parked on both sides where the arms can’t be used, multiple crew members will still be needed on many trash trucks to get the carts to the tipper mechanisms, Public Works Director Michael Shaw said.

Shaw said residents unfamiliar with trash carts might be happy to know that the switch might cut down on illegal dumping, due to current limits on how much garbage you can put out every week without paying extra.

“The current rule is you’re allowed to put out two bags weighing 40 pounds (each),” he explained the council business session before Thursday’s vote. “These carts can hold up to 240 pounds in the cart.”

Seems like enough for most households. All the same, Shaw said the city still wants people to put their garbage in bags before tossing them in the carts.