INC NEWS - Solid Waste problems worse than reported

[RW Pickle]

>From the Herald Sun today.
RWP
27 Beverly
 

By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg at heraldsun.com
May 23, 2006 : 10:34 pm ET

DURHAM -- The shortage of trash collectors on May 12 that caused missed
pickups and eventually the resignation of Durham's new solid-waste
director was deeper than city officials first acknowledged.

During a City Council budget review on Tuesday, Assistant City Manager Ted
Voorhees said the Solid Waste Management Department had only nine of the
20 collectors it needed to ensure that the day's trash routes would be
serviced.

Voorhees had said last week that the department had 13 of the needed
collectors. As he did last week, he stressed again Tuesday that facing a
shortage so deep, former Solid Waste Management Director James Jackson and
other officials should have brought in outside help to finish the
scheduled pickups.

Jackson, in his first week on the job, had ruled out bringing in contract
labor. The decision was an attempt to control costs. Jackson quit before
completing the second week of his $103,000-a-year job.

"My point to the staff was that if you need one or two temps every day, we
need to fix that," Voorhees said. "But when you're 11 short, you have to
do something extraordinary. You can't just say, 'Suck it up and get it
done.' That's just not enough resources."

The department is authorized to employ 29 collectors.

In addition to supplying more details on the May 12 incident, Tuesday's
briefing gave council members a chance to learn more about the "task
system" that governs the work and payment of the city's trash collectors.

The system in theory requires collectors to work 10-hour days on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. But if they finish their assigned routes
quickly, they can leave after 2:30 on those days and still get credit for
a full day's work.

Collectors also receive overtime pay for any hours they work on Wednesday
and Saturday, the days the Solid Waste Management Departments uses to
catch up with collections missed because of holidays, bad weather or
operational problems.

Voorhees said Durham's system is similar to those used in Raleigh, Chapel
Hill, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and other cities. Its chief advantage is
that workers have a built-in incentive to finish early and don't require
as much supervision as they would if they were only on the clock, he said.

The main problem is that the task system -- particularly the idea that
someone can receive 40 hours' worth of pay for less than 40 hours of work
-- is hard to explain to elected officials and residents, Voorhees said.

Councilman Thomas Stith, Councilwoman Diane Catotti and Mayor Bill Bell
quickly underscored that point by criticizing the system. Their main
objection was to the idea of paying overtime automatically for any work on
the two makeup days.

To Stith and Bell, it didn't make sense that there might be extra work on
a Wednesday or Saturday if the collectors had truly finished all their
work on the four days they're required to be in the field.

"Have we purposely understated what can be done in a 10-hour day?" Bell
asked.

Stith noted that he'd asked for -- and as of Tuesday still hadn't received
-- an audit of worker hours that would show how often collectors are
clocking out early. "That's going to be the crux of it," he said. "Are we
paying overtime in situations where the [40-hour] trigger hasn't been
pulled yet?"

The problem as they saw it is that the city usually pays $400,000 or more
each year for overtime and contract labor, a small part of the Solid Waste
Management Department's $21.3 million budget, but enough nonetheless to
take money away from other programs the council would like to fund.

"That's real money, and over three years, it's a penny on the tax rate,"
Stith said of the extra expense. "That's how we measure things around
here. While we are doing well in certain areas, we shouldn't shy away if
we need to make corrections. We can't control fuel costs, but if it's a
policy matter, why shy away from it?"

City Manager Patrick Baker said he's also had questions about the system,
but had elected to wait on suggesting major changes in the department's
operations until a new director was on board.

"I can get my arms around the task system if the tasks are all completed
and we're not supplementing it with extra funds," Baker said, noting that
the department's existing pay policies date from 1999, during the
administration of former City Manager Lamont Ewell.