Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060530
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At a regular meeting Tuesday, Vinton Town Council voted 4-1 to purchase a recylables collection truck that should solve some of the program's problems.
Citizen response to the program, which started on May 21, has been extraordinary, Nester wrote in a memorandum addressed to the council. On June 4, town workers picked up their heaviest load yet, Nester said.
Workers began collecting the recyclables early in the morning, and did not finish until 8:40 p.m. The collection took so long, he said, because the town has not yet purchased a vehicle designed specifically for collecting recyclables.
Because of the limited capacity of the dump trucks the town is using, workers initially went back and forth to the recycling center after each load was collected. Now they are stockpiling the recyclables at the public works department, to be trucked to the recycling center later.
The lack of a proper vehicle is creating a manpower strain for the Public Works Department, Nester said, as well as costing $105 per day in overtime pay.
"This has been an expensive lesson for us to learn," Nester said, explaining that the truck should have been available at the start of the program.
Nester recommended that the town accept a bid from Refuse Equipment Co.for a 2 1/2-ton truck body and chassis at a cost of $41,141, which is $11,141 over the budgeted amount of $30,000.
One of the three companies submitted a lower bid, Nester said, but Refuse Equipment offered the shortest delivery time, an important consideration if the town is to maintain the credibility of the recycling program.
The expenditure of the extra $10,000 is justified, he said, because that amount equals the money that would have to have been used for overtime pay for workers while the Public Works Department waited on a truck with a later delivery time.
Council member Donald Davis disagreed, and voted against the purchase, saying the expense was not necessary. Because the program has just started, he said, citizens are probably "cleaning out their attics," and the amount of recyclable materials turned in would probably diminish soon.
The new truck, which will be delivered by July 15, will have a six-yard container for paper, a six-yard container for plastics and four-yard containers for glass and aluminum.
In another recycling-related matter, town resident Mike Cisco appeared before the council to complain about the size of the storage containers the town has issued to each household.
The container, he said, is too small. "They need to pick up the [recyclables] weekly, or provide us with two containers."
Nester said that so far, 55 percent of the complaints about the containers have been that they are too small, and 45 percent that they are too big.
The recycling program, he said, "was geared to an older population," with an average age of 60 to 62, which demographic studies show is appropriate for the town.
Providing larger containers, he said, would have been prohibitively expensive, and the town would not have been able to provide them free of charge. Citizens can purchase additional containers from the town at a cost of $6 each, or they can put extra recyclables in plastic bags, he said.
"I had to buy an extra one myself," Nester said.
"I think we're getting less service now than before," Cisco said. "I'm finding out that most of my garbage is recyclables." And because they are picked up every two weeks, rather than every week, as other garbage is, washing and storing recyclable items is creating more work, he said.
"I think the town ought to provide extra containers at no cost," Cisco added, but Nester pointed out that the town does not provide free garbage cans, and should not be expected to provide more than one recycling container.
"It's not a perfect system," Councilman Davis said. "We'll have to work our way through it."
"We're feeling our way along," Mayor Charles Hill agreed.
by CNB