After months of warning residents that either garbage fees were going up or services were going down, DeKalb County now says neither will be needed – at least until next year.
Cost savings put the county $1.9 million below expected spending in just the first four months of the year, according to a recent county report. That puts the county on pace to cover an earlier projected shortfall. It also eliminates the immediate need to cut curbside trash pickup from twice weekly to once a week or charge another $40 a year for service.
Still, plans to move to weekly trash pickup remain on the table as the best way to hold the $265 annual sanitation fee steady for future years.
“It is not our intent to wait for a time when we do need to (make changes),” said DeKalb Chief Operating Officer Zachary Williams. “Our intent will be to increase efficiency, reinvest savings and modernize our operation.”
In a survey conducted by Kennesaw Research Center, more than 60 percent of residents favored the reduced service over a fee hike. Informal online surveys yielded similar results.
“I’m always in favor of government becoming more efficient,” said Betsy Turner, a Presbyterian minister who supports the once-weekly pickup. “It just makes sense to me that DeKalb would go in the direction of consolidating service.”
Turner recently moved to Northlake from Atlanta, where crews pick up trash, recycling and yard waste on a single day in different areas of the city.
DeKalb had long provided service four days a week: trash pickup twice weekly and separate days of collection of recyclables and yard waste.
The county has kept its annual fee steady since 2006, largely from a recycling program that added years to life the landfill it owns on Seminole Road.
Last year, DeKalb lifted the subscription fee for its recycling in a bid to boost participation and further extend the landfill’s life. Doing so enables the county to avoid paying more to haul its waste away, a driving force for high sanitation rates in other large metro jurisdictions.
Gwinnett County, for instance, charges $218 and $120 a year for one weekly trash and yard waste pickup, respectively. The recycling cost is embedded in the trash pickup fee.
“Maybe when people see how low DeKalb is, they’ll support keeping (the fee) there,” said Joseph Snyder, a civil engineer from Tucker.
Budget projections late last year showed with that low fee and increased costs, DeKalb stood to lose $5 million on sanitation service in 2013. In response, the county combined recycling and yard waste collection to a single day.
Savings from that effort, and deploying 41 trucks that run on compressed natural gas instead of diesel fuel, are now projected to cover this year’s $70.9 million sanitation budget.
“We will keep looking for ways to reduce costs and not reduce services,” said Commissioner Stan Watson. “We will still need citizen input, but for now, there are no changes.”
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