EVERY-OTHER-WEEK PLAN DIDN’T WORK OUT AS HOPED
Recycling collection is returning to being a weekly thing in Platte City.
The change is effective July 1.
Marji Gehr, who officially takes over as city administrator for the retiring DJ Gehrt on July 1, says there are a number of factors driving the return to weekly service, after months of recycling pickup being every-other-week to the city’s residential customers.
The city had cut the service back to every-other-week in February.
“The city has heard loud and clear from many different residents that recycling is an essential service that they are willing to pay for, which is somewhat contradictory to the resident feedback received in the survey last year,” said Gehr, who has been serving as acting city administrator since March as Gehrt neared his retirement date.
Recycling is included in the monthly solid waste collection fee, as there is no separate charge for it.
“Right now, the city receives approximately a dozen calls a week about recycling. The confusion about which week is recycling and which week is not has created tremendous friction with our residents – definitely not what the city wanted,” Gehr told The Landmark this week.
“Additionally, the volume of recycling materials collected by the city has not decreased – it’s right about the same as in prior years. So essentially, we are picking up the same volume of trash each week and double the amount of recycling every other week. The double amount of recycling is sometimes more than our trucks’ capacity on a given day, which means we are making more trips to the materials recovery facility during recycling week and there are simply only so many hours in a given day.”
Conceptually, cutting back to every other week appeared to be an opportunity for cost savings to residents. That has not been the reality, however.
“It is not working out that way, and in some respects has resulted in over-capacity trucks that caused mechanical failures and increased our fleet maintenance costs,” Gehr explained.
The net result of all of this? The city will go back to weekly recycling.
“Staff is working to identify other ways to improve efficiencies in solid waste collection and manage costs so that rates are minimally affected as possible. We don’t have the answer today about what those efficiencies will be, however, I suspect we will need to be less flexible in the future about the volume of materials placed at the curb that do not fit into the 96 gallon recycling container provided to residents,” Gehr remarked.
Or, she said, the city may have to standardize trash collection to 96 gallon bins and charge extra fees for extra trash.
“At the end of the day, we need to find efficiencies somewhere in the solid waste collection system to keep rates for our residents as stable as possible,” said Gehr.
