Mid-May may mark the end of what residents have dubbed a smelly situation in Huntington.
After months of fielding citizens’ complaints about the accumulation of trash, Mayor Steve Updike held a press conference Thursday afternoon to announce the City of Huntington will bring back weekly garbage pickup on a trial basis beginning May 10.
After operating on a cost-saving, bimonthly schedule, the City Street Department garbage crew will now pick up trash every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We will try to make the public happy because they are not happy now,” Updike said, noting garbage will not be picked up at all the week of April 26, but will be picked up Monday through Friday the week of May 3.
Updike explained residents whose trash day is currently Monday or Tuesday will get their garbage picked up Monday. Those whose trash is typically taken care of on Wednesday or Thursday will get their garbage picked up on Tuesday, and Wednesday will be the new trash day for residents who typically have their garbage picked up on Friday.
Updike said city employees will place a new schedule on the door of every home to ensure residents know what days to put out their trash.
“We tried the every-other-week schedule and it just wasn’t working,” Updike said, explaining the change will neither cost the city money nor aid its growing $876,000 deficit. Rather, the Street Department is merely reprioritizing its services to better meet citizens’ desires. “Thursday and Friday we will use the Street Department for any other street work … we’ve had to realign manpower.”
In his announcement, Updike said only Street Department employees will pick up garbage on the new weekly schedule. Since attrition, layoffs and the removal of part time positions have taken the Street Department from 30 employees to an 11-member crew, Street Commissioner Dave Spencer stated on April 15 he didn’t believe weekly garbage pickup would be possible without the assistance of other city departments.
Spencer was unavailable for comment on how the department will handle the new pickup schedule.
Although Common Council’s past discussions of weekly trash scheduling included charging residents a monthly fee, Updike said pickup will begin without a garbage fee in place. However, Common Council will discuss the possibility of implementing an overall fee for city services during a public hearing at the Tuesday, April 27 Common Council meeting.
The meeting is set for 6:45 a.m. in the Mayor’s Office on the third floor of the City Building, 300 Cherry Street, Huntington.
Councilman Jason Fields, who voted against last November’s garbage fee proposal which was defeated in a 4-3 vote, said he’s done more research on the issue and is now in favor of a fee with the inclusion of a sunset clause so the fee will be evaluated at a later date.
“A fee, in my eyes, is something that may need to take place because without a fee we are going to be in huge financial problems – more than we are currently,” Fields said. “How much money, I don’t know … I think if we want to continue to have the services that we currently have as a city, I feel we need a fee.”
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