Garbage rules are in effect Monday
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 13, 2015 1:50 AM
After a several-month-long "soft start" to enforcing the city's new rules and regulations surrounding garbage collection that began on June 1, the new ordinances will officially take effect and begin being fully enforced on Monday.
The new rules for collection of garbage bins are as follows:
* Place your bin on the edge of the curb or pavement in front of your residence with three feet of clearance in all directions, including three feet of space between recycling and refuse bins.
* Put bins out before 6 a.m. on your scheduled collection day.
* Do not allow your garbage bin to overflow and do not place bags on top of your recycling or refuse bins.
* Bins must be placed with the opening facing the road and the handle facing your home.
If a resident's trash is not collected for any reason, they will need to take it to the Wayne County landfill or wait until their next garbage collection day to have their trash collected.
Citizens will not be fined for improper bin placement.
The landfill is located at 460-B South Landfill Road in Dudley. A tipping fee is charged for using the landfill -- $30 per ton of garbage or a $5 minimum fee. For the majority of household garbage brought in by residents, $5 will be charged.
There are many reasons why garbage might not be collected, from improper bin placement to the garbage bin being blocked by a car or tree on the designated collection day.
And now, the city employees operating the garbage trucks will be able to document exactly why garbage was not collected with a program called Mobile 311.
Public Works Director Jose Martinez said the department began testing the program on Sept. 8, and will use the program every day garbage is collected.
"This program was actually designed with sanitation in mind," Martinez said. "It's all interconnected. All four of our fully automated trucks and one of our regular trucks have this. Right now, we're using an iPhone, so that's the hardware."
The program is downloaded onto a smart phone and then placed in the worker's truck, and then the worker mounts the smart phone on their dash.
If there is a problem preventing the worker from collecting a garbage bin, they simply select an option for why they won't be picking up the garbage -- such as overflow or improper bin placement -- then snap a photo of the garbage bin, and the photo is automatically sent to the system at the public works department, documenting the issue with photographic evidence and providing the main office with the precise location and address where garbage could not be picked up.
Martinez said the new system will improve the department's customer service, as well as empower the truck drivers.
"There's two aspects to this. One is customer service and improving how we're able to serve our customers, and then it tells us what happened if we're not able to service you," Martinez said. "If the bin's not out, if there's stuff on top and it's overflowing, if a car's in front of it, or if the bins are behind a tree -- we have one customer who has a huge beautiful oak tree, and they put both the recycling and the trash can behind the tree -- that completely stops us from being able to service it. Initially what we'll do with cases like those where we can't service the customer is we'll still get out and we'll put a yellow sticker saying it's a violation, but we will no longer service it. We'll just put the sticker on it."
Prior to having this system, it was the driver's word against the citizen's word when garbage could not be collected.
"This new program will allow them (the workers) to see a problem, take a picture and say, 'This is the problem,' and it is immediately on our server. You don't have to download it, it's there immediately after however long it takes to upload the picture to the web," Martinez said. "If someone calls up and says, 'Hey, you missed me. Why did you miss me? I saw the truck go by and your guy even got out and looked at it.' What can happen now is we'll ask for their address, go right to the address (in the program) and it will tell us exactly what happened. It gives us a picture and a timestamp."