Many people think the trend toward automation is moving too quickly, but in one Mount Airy elected official’s view it’s not occurring fast enough where automated garbage collection is concerned.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Commissioner Tom Koch said Friday of a perceived reluctance by fellow city leaders to fully embrace sanitation pickups that don’t require humans.
Under that system, trash carts are side-loaded onto trucks using controls inside the cab, rather than exposing personnel to oncoming vehicles and other hazards of emptying carts outside into the rear of trucks.
The Mount Airy Board of Commissioners first eyed automated garbage collection in May 2019 during a presentation by then-Public Works Director Jeff Boyles, who said this would be safer while also saving the municipality money.
“We have been awfully slow to approve any of it,” Koch said at a council meeting on April 15 during a period set aside for city officials to offer general comments.
He used that time to address his lingering concerns over the need for a full shift to automation, including presenting figures bearing the heading “Transparency.” The lists highlights savings to be realized from that step which Koch says are being bypassed.
And he believes this reflects a pattern of fiscal behavior by the city government.
“We can spend money in a heartbeat, but we can’t save money,” he said Friday. “This board takes over two years to adopt savings and no time at all to increase taxes.”
It’s not as if the full city board is against automated garbage service, which many communities have had for years.
The commissioners voted earlier this year to order two side-loading trucks costing $760,000, which were expected to arrive late this month or in early May at last report.
However, Koch indicated that the city is not going far enough, including eliminating four garbage collector positions through automation. Instead, the plan in place now calls for doing away with only two jobs, which he says is keeping Mount Airy from achieving its full savings potential through the change.
One sticking point has surrounded a related proposal to buy 4,500 brush carts — costing $270,000 — for residents to place yard waste in as part of the automated process.
The majority of commissioners don’t believe there is a wholesale need for those carts among the citizenry.
Meanwhile, it was mentioned during a meeting on March 4 that two of the four garbage collectors will need to be kept on the job in the absence of the carts.
Employees would be required to physically place yard waste into the new side-loading vehicles, which also will be a more difficult task since the entry point is higher than that of the rear-loading trucks now used.
“I think we need to keep the other two (workers) if you don’t go with the carts,” city Sanitation Supervisor Russell Jarrell told the commissioners on March 4.
Savings of $640,000
Commissioner Koch is now proposing that only 2,500 brush carts be bought at a price of $150,000 to accommodate residents who presumably would use those containers.
His says his plan, based on four positions being slashed rather than two, would save $1,550,000 in personnel costs (salaries and benefits) over a 10-year period compared to $775,000 if two jobs were retained.
“The full automation not only pays for everything we buy,” Koch said of the equipment, “it saves an additional $640,000.” The savings from just two positions being cut would be $15,000, according to his figures.
The first-term North Ward commissioner also is bothered by what he considers to be contradictions — comparing what some municipal officials say vs. what actually is done.
“We’re always looking for ways to make things more efficient,” he said.
“When we can become more efficient, we need to do it,” Koch stressed, which he says is not the case with the garbage modernization.
Koch further referred to city officials not acting on recommendations such as those by Boyles in May 2019 to fully automate collections.
“We’re always bragging on our personnel,” he said of a consistent stance by Mount Airy officials, but then don’t act on their requests. “To me, that’s almost dysfunction.”
On Friday Koch said eliminating the positions would not have any effect on the people filling them now.
“Well, we have a lot of turnover anyway,” he said, which would allow those cuts to occur through attrition and possibly by moving personnel into other, vacant slots.
“We would not fire anybody.”
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com