Marietta eyes changes to trash and recycling service, fees

MARIETTA — Amid a shortage of workers and rising recycling costs, city staff is asking the Marietta City Council to consider changes to sanitation services such as modified fees and reduced services.

Public Works Director Mark Rice said in an interview that sanitation has been operating with 40% vacancy for at least 1.5 years. In order to improve recruiting and retention and reduce costs, the city is considering reducing twice-a-week trash pickup to weekly pickup, and eliminating “backdoor” pickup, where workers walk up driveways to retrieve garbage from cans outside homes, instead of simply emptying curbside roll carts.

Marietta is unusual in offering backdoor pickup and twice-weekly service, per Rice. Implementing changes to sanitation would bring the city “up to current industry standards, align us with adjoining local governments and solid waste collection companies, reduce employee turnover, reduce worker’s compensation claims and injuries, and increase retainage of employees,” Rice wrote in a memo.

Rice told the MDJ sanitation workers received raises earlier this year as a result of the pay study the city conducted. Starting wages used to be around $11 per hour, he said, and are now above $14 per hour.

On the recycling front, Rice has proposed several cost-saving options for the council to consider, such as adding a $10 monthly fee, reducing pickup frequency or halting the service altogether, citing a “300%” increase in the cost of recycling over the past few years.

The City Council’s three-member Public Works Committee seemed amenable to some of Rice’s ideas, and voted unanimously Wednesday night to advance the topic out of committee to its July 11 work session.

Proposed garbage changes

Rice estimates that less than 10% of the city’s roughly 16,000 customers receive backdoor trash pickup. Backdoor pickup, which was first implemented in the city in the 1960s, is physically demanding and hinders recruitment and retention, he said.

“This is very labor intensive,” Rice said at Wednesday’s meeting. “This is what we have been told during some of our interviews with folks — this is part of the reason we're having trouble getting people to come to work, and then retaining employees, is because of some of this backdoor work.”

The city has been slowly phasing out backdoor service, and for more than a decade has required new subdivisions to use roll carts. Rice wants those remaining customers who receive the service to switch.

“A lot of the, I guess you would call it more established neighborhoods, have kind of been grandfathered in over the years,” Rice told the MDJ. “And so what we are proposing is, everyone to go to roll carts … It's just not the business model anymore, and so we need to slowly start moving away from that.”

Disabled and handicapped people could still receive backdoor service with a valid doctor’s note, Rice said. Mayor Steve Tumlin requested that “physically limited” people also be included, saying that disabled and handicapped were too narrow.

Some residents also have their own, non-city issued roll carts. To get the entire city on curbside roll cart service, the city would need to buy about $650,000 worth of carts, Rice said, and likely wait six to eight months to receive all the carts. Rice is proposing the city use federal COVID relief dollars to purchase them.

Over time, Rice said the city could decrease labor costs by embracing roll carts. The carts can be lifted and emptied into the truck with a mechanical arm, which makes pickup a one-man job, instead of requiring three-man crews.

Rice has also proposed modifying fees for roll carts. The 32-gallon carts, currently priced at $22.75 per month, would be phased out and be replaced with 48-gallon carts, which would be priced lower at $17.75 per month.

There would also be two other sizes available:

• 68-gallon carts, currently priced at $20.50 per month, would be increased to $22.75 per month;
• 96-gallon carts, currently priced at $22.75, would be raised to 27.75 per month.

The city also offers multiple carts for households that produce a high volume of garbage.

Proposed recycling changes

Rice presented a slew of options to ease the cost of recycling to the city.

“Twenty-plus years ago, recycling companies were paying governments or haulers for you to bring that to them, they were paying you a fee,” Rice said. “Well, as the recycling business changed over the years, they stopped paying and they started charging. … And it continues to go up.”

Two or three years ago, the city paid $15 per ton to dump its recycling at a private-sector processing center (the city does not have its own recycling plant). That price jumped to $45 per ton, Rice said, and has now reached $60 per ton. Come spring, the price is scheduled to rise to $70 per ton.

By comparison, the city spends $36 per ton to dump its trash at a landfill, Rice said.

Under one option, the city could establish a new, $10 monthly fee for recycling pickup (recycling is currently free for all sanitation customers, and staff estimate about 50% of customers participate). Under this option, the city would also need to create a new route to account for growth, at an estimated cost of $350,000 for new equipment and more staff.

Another option would see recycling eliminated entirely — at least for the time being. Customers who want to continue recycling would have to drop it off at the Public Works facility on North Marietta Parkway.

Councilman Andy Morris asked whether halting the recycling program would simply lead to increased garbage volume. Rice said it would, but that increased garbage volume would still cost less than the recycling status quo.

A third option would see recycling converted to once-a-week pickup, instead of twice-a-week pickup, and otherwise leave the program alone. The city would revisit other options at a later date, once staffing levels have stabilized.

Committee members Grif Chalfant and Joseph Goldstein both spoke in favor of reducing garbage pickup to once-a-week and converting all customers to curbside roll carts. On the recycling front, they both liked the idea of reducing pickup to once-a-week, and reevaluating the program at a later date, rather than halting the program or adding fees.

The full council will take up the issue at its July 11 work session.

Regarding twice-a-week pickup and backdoor service, Chalfant told the MDJ, “I think that we're figuring out that we really can’t afford it.”