INC NEWS - A New Yard Waste Plan For Citywide Service

[RW Pickle]

I went to spread the good news to Council last night that I want them to
loan their $25K of "mad money" to Solid Waste to get 600 brown carts to
get this yard waste plan rolling. We're early in the budget cycle (they
just passed it last night) and what better time to do good things with
some of the money. Solid Waste is just borrowing the money from Council
because as they sell a cart, the money goes back into the "mad money"
fund. So there really is no expense to either the Council or Solid Waste
and we can begin to get the carts out there.

See, Solid Waste really didn't get much in the way of new stuff this
budget season (although there were nearly a million bucks in new trucks in
the budget that was passed). And the thought of rolling out the long
anticipated yard waste plan across town was tossed in the process. But
that's positive because with the plan I propose, it really doesn't cost
anything additional.

We already drive all over town picking up yard waste. Some streets may
only have one cart on them. And as I understood it, some streets aren't
even traveled down. So the thought that by making it a service to
everyone, maybe we'll pick up an additional cart of two on a street. So we
get more waste than we typically do, so what? It's cleaning up the City
and it becomes a service to everyone. No more $60/yr fees, but you'll
still have to buy a cart (or 3 more to go with it because they'll pick up
as many as 4). So now we've managed to give everyone in the City a new
service at no additional cost. Who even knows if it'll catch on.

Solid Waste may say it can't be done, but  I can't see why. We're already
driving all over the town picking it up here and there. And if we have to
make an additional trip or 2 to the dump because of volume, then maybe the
solid waste crews will put in a little more than the 20 or so hours they
are doing now with the task system. And in September, they're getting 2
new yard waste trucks; just in time for fall of the year. I say we try it.

My other thoughts are, do we really need it picked up weekly? They're
looking at doing recyclables twice a month. Why couldn't we do yard waste
the same way? Especially this time of year just to see how it all works. I
say this idea of needing 7 more trucks and folks to staff them is the
wrong way to look at this problem. You don't put out a fire by throwing
gasoline on it. Figuring out how to do more with less is one of the few
ways that actually save the taxpayers money.

As a citizen member of the INC committee that went forth to find a
solution to the illegal dumping and current fee structure, our goal has
been to roll out the yard waste plan all across Durham. And because we
thought Solid Waste understood the yard waste plan was our priority, we
thought they'd be our cheerleader. So as it turned out, this wasn't the #1
new initiative they took to the table. And since we thought that is was
going to be #1, we as citizens never lobbied Council to support it. They
never heard from us so they thought it wasn't important. And this past
evening really wasn't the time to be telling them for the first time that
we really wanted this issue resolved. So instead, I came up with this no
cost solution

The #1 item was the misplaced bulky/brushy item pickup service that really
was a wolf in sheep's clothing. That entire program is really an emergency
management tool that the City felt they needed because of the last big
debris storm. The contractor sort of had them by... well you know, and
after it was all done, more than $8M had been spent. So they decided we
needed these trucks with cherry pickers and big trailers in order to
prevent that from happening again. So the yard waste wasn't where we as
your citizen representatives thought it was going to be on the list and it
was dropped. Leaving us all wondering what went wrong.

At least if we try these other ideas, it'll start getting us ready for the
next opportunity to have it funded; next year or the year after. Way too
long for us to wait after spending almost a year on it already. I'm
throwing this out for discussion. I told Council about it at their meeting
last night. It really costs nothing to try it and see. Worst thing that
could happen is that it wouldn't work. But until we try it, we'll never
know. Just saying it won't work isn't good enough for me.

And your thoughts...

RWP
27 Beverly