March 27, 2023
By: Dwayne Page
Should DeKalb County’s Garbage Collection Convenience sites be closed on Sundays?
Last fall County Mayor Matt Adcock announced that the sites would be closed on Sundays starting October 30 but that they would be open Mondays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. At the time, Adcock said he decided to change the hours to give the 24 part time employees who man the convenience sites Sundays off and to bring more uniformity to the operating hours during the week. Each of the employees are scheduled to work 27 hours per week.
For some, the move has not been popular.
During Monday night’s regular monthly meeting concerned resident and businessman Robin Driver addressed the county commission in the public comment period asking that the action be reconsidered. Driver, a local realtor and operator of vacation rentals, said keeping the convenience sites closed on Sundays poses a burden especially on vacation homeowners at Center Hill Lake who have no place to take their garbage during weekend retreats.
“I come here tonight to speak to you on behalf of the people who are vacation homeowners on Center Hill Lake, the people who come and visit our lake, and the people who call Smithville, DeKalb County, and Center Hill Lake home for a short period. They are not as fortunate as us. They don’t get to stay here full time,” said Driver.
“This past weekend was one of our nicest weekends we have had so far this year and a lot of these people were up here visiting and using their vacation homes for the first time,” Driver continued.” Since you have passed the ordinance to close the dump sites down (Sundays), myself or my staff received over 32 calls this weekend from people wanting to know where do we take our trash? These dump sites have been open on Sundays for many, many years and I have no idea what the reason was for closing them. I am very concerned that this is going to cause a huge problem. The vast majority of these people come here and stay the weekend and then they leave to go home. When they leave on Sundays, they need some place to take their trash. If you or I have to wait until Monday, it’s not a big deal. We can let it set there for an extra day. These folks are not going to let it (garbage) set in these vacation homes for a week until they are back the next week. I am here to ask you to reconsider your position on the trash situation. Otherwise, I think people are going to be dumping their trash at these sites that are unattended,” said Driver.
During his remarks, Driver cited statistics revealing the economic impact of tourism in DeKalb County. “Our visitors last year spent $51.2 million in business sales in DeKalb County. A 30% increase over the previous year. That was 2.3 million people who visited our county last year. Thirty-two million dollars in direct spending in DeKalb County, $51.2 million in business sales and $1.1 million in local sales tax paid by overnight tourists in DeKalb County. On average every single day in DeKalb County, these people are spending $87,672, $3,015 in local daily taxes and because of that each one of us gets a $322 tax relief on our property taxes because of the money coming in from these people,” said Driver.
Some county commissioners said they too have received public complaints about not being able to dump garbage on Sundays.
After the public comment period near the end of the meeting, County Mayor Adcock asked for and received a motion and second to adjourn the meeting but before the vote a few commissioners wanted to continue the discussion about the issue.
“This is not only an issue with lake homes,” said Commissioner Tony (Cully) Culwell. “Robin we (county commission) didn’t pass it because this was out of our control, but we understand. Every one of us gets a phone call every day. It is an issue and from what I have heard, I went to convenience sites and there is only one person that wanted off on Sunday. It’s what I was told,” said Commissioner Culwell.
While admitting that he has heard from some in the community who are not satisfied, County Mayor Adcock said most of the response to him has been favorable. In addition to giving workers Sundays off, Adcock said part of the reason for his decision was because the solid waste transfer station, where all the garbage is transported to weekdays from the convenience sites, was already closed on weekends and he wanted to keep the sites closed at least on Sunday to keep dumpsters there from filling up and overflowing with no way to empty them until Monday.
“Previous to my administration, the complaint used to be the dumpsters are always overflowing. There is always trash on the ground. I can’t dump my trash. Before, that was the problem at every site in the county. Our transfer station is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. So if we are open on Saturdays and Sundays where is the trash going to go? It’s going to set on the ground and we’re going to continuously get written up by the state because of trash all over the ground and it looks terrible. So instead of getting written up and paying fines, I closed the dumps on Sundays and gave the workers an opportunity to have one day with their families whether they go to church or not. It wasn’t just a church thing. We still operate it (convenience sites) on Saturdays because I felt like the community needed at least one (weekend) day to take their trash off even though the transfer station is closed and it takes everything Director James Goff has to keep things operating functionally with just one weekend day. Sundays was a difficult move and I have had a lot of backlash from it but I have also had a lot of really good compliments about it. With the two, three, or four complaints I have had about it, I have probably had times ten the number of people saying that they enjoy the way that it has changed and it has bettered their community. Before, most of them (public) couldn’t take their trash off early in the morning. They had to take it off in the evening. Now they have that convenience. It (hours) got moved to 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. because that works better with first shift, second shift, and third shift before or after they (public) have to go to work,” said County Mayor Adcock.
Commissioner Tim Reynolds then asked “Are we going to kick this back to the public works committee for further discussion? I mean, obviously this could be a potential issue as we get closer to summer. I am just asking if maybe we need more discussions?”
“We can if you want to,” answered County Mayor Adcock.
“I think at least we need some discussions,” said Commissioner Reynolds.
“We need to figure out something because ultimately all we did is push our problem off on somebody else. I rolled up at Smithville Elementary School this morning for work and there was trash setting over there by where the dumpster was. Granted, people are going to leave their trash everywhere but its not an employee’s job at that school to go outside and pick up somebody else’s trash,” said Commissioner Greg Matthews.
Commissioner Beth Pafford said she also thought it a good idea for the public works committee to meet on the issue.
County Mayor Adcock said he would schedule a meeting of the public works committee but added that appropriating more money for solid waste could resolve the problem.
“If you (county commission) want it (convenience sites) to be (open) more days, give me more money to operate,” said County Mayor Adcock. “You only have so much money and you’re never going to make anything perfect. No matter what you do someone is not going to like something. You’ll have complaints if you have it open 24/7. You will still find somebody to complain about something. The answer would be to give more money and we’ll keep it open all the time, I’m sure we could find somebody who would want to work on Sundays but in order to meet everybody’s needs and fix everybody’s problems you are going to have to have it open all the time and the way to do that is more money,” said Adcock.