FORT SMITH -- The Board of Directors is considering whether to switch to a recycling and yard waste collection schedule of every other week.
The city sanitation director, Kyle Foreman, presented the board with possible changes during a study session Tuesday. This included the recycling and yard waste collection schedule.
Foreman wrote in a memo that the sanitation department is operating at a projected deficit of $432,661.84 during this year. However, he noted that while switching collection to every other week would save the department money, it would not be enough to make up that deficit.
"If we do nothing, our expenses will exceed our revenues through the year 2025," Foreman wrote. "By the year 2023 we will not be able to meet our required reserve balance obligations and by 2024 our fund balance is gone."
The sanitation department, Foreman said, has seven crews that collect recycling and yard waste four days per week. This requires 14 full-time employees, with the department collecting about 200 tons each of recycling and yard waste per month.
Going to an every-other-week collection schedule would mean residents would get their recycling and yard waste picked up twice a month on average, Foreman said.
He said larger cities that have made this kind of switch to save money and because of changes in recycling markets include Austin, Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; and Raleigh, N.C.
"I actually used to live in Raleigh, and they've done that for a very long time. And it worked really well. I never had any capacity issues," he said.
By switching to the every-other-week schedule, Foreman said the department would only need a maximum of five trucks and 10 full-time employees for yard waste collection. Similarly, only three trucks and six full-time employees would be necessary for recycling collection.
This can be accomplished by freezing vacancies and/or moving some workers to other vacant positions inside the department, according to Foreman. By doing just this, the department would go from 27 full-time employees to 23, remove two trucks from its capital improvement plan and save about $340,000 total annually.
However, Foreman wrote in his memo that the sanitation department also needs to balance its residential routes and add more route capacity on certain days.
Three out of four route days need additional route capacity. The department would not have to hire additional staff to accomplish this if it switched to every other week collection. This would also allow the department to add a bulky tree collection service without needing to add employees. This would be a scheduled service accompanied by a small fee.
Foreman also recommended a variety of means to change how the sanitation department collects yard waste. This included purchasing 96 gallon yard waste carts and then selling them to residents who want them, giving them another option to hold their yard waste for two weeks.
"This would also have the truck do the bulk of the heavy lifting," Foreman said. "Right now, with the bags and the 32 gallon carts that you buy from Lowe's or Home Depot, we physically lift those in there, so if we got a standardized cart, the trucks could do a lot of the heavy lifting, which would cut down on some workers' comp claims."
Foreman said strains and sprains comprise about 40% of citywide workers' compensation claims. He also recommended moving from plastic bags to paper bags, saying the department spends $70,000 per year to debag plastic from the yard waste stream that could be repurposed toward other ends.
"Switching to [every other week] collection does not solve our budget and fund balance issues," Foreman wrote in his memo. "Expenses still exceed revenue through 2025. Our fund balance is still affected, but we never go below our required reserve, and we draw it down substantially."
Foreman also proposed implementing a residential and commercial sanitation rate increase, which was discussed during an Oct. 29 city board study session.
Foreman said to accomplish all these recommendations would necessitate adding back the two trucks that would be able to be removed from the sanitation department's capital improvement plan by going to an every other week schedule and adding one person back to the department's head count for a total of 24 full-time employees.
However, this would still result in about $168,000 in total annual operating savings, and although it will run the department a deficit this year, following years will see its expenses be below its revenue.
The board will have its next regular meeting Jan. 21.
State Desk on 01/15/2020