Wayne County landfill days, hours to change
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 18, 2018 5:50 AM
The Wayne County landfill at Dudley will begin operating on a new schedule effective Tuesday, Sept. 4.
The change could be followed sometime later by new schedules for the county's 13 convenience sites, although that has yet to be determined.
Currently, the landfill is not open on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Under a schedule approved Tuesday by Wayne County commissioners, the landfill will now be open Monday through Saturday.
Its hours of operation will change as well in order to control operational cost associated with the additional day.
Instead of being open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., the landfill will be open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
"This would not require additional staffing or additional overtime at this time," County Manager Craig Honeycutt said. "We have had preliminary conversations with our residential haulers, and they also believe that the new schedule would suit them well also."
Their concern is they have more issues at the landfill early in the morning than later in the day, he said.
Also by opening the landfill daily during the week, there should not be any issues of citizens not having any options in regard to their trash disposal, Honeycutt said.
The decision does not include the convenience centers that also are closed on Wednesdays.
"One of the concerns, I think, that was brought up by the board is looking at our convenience centers," he said. "Our convenience centers are a little bit different because we have 13 different locations.
"Right now, we are analyzing to see if we can't adjust those hours and how we could do that without any major costs associated with the county."
Currently, the county uses part-time employees at the convenience sites, he said.
If additional hours are added, they may change to full-time status, Honeycutt said.
That would mean the county would have to pay additional benefits, he said.
Honeycutt said he would like to use surveys and start looking at trash flow, the best times and when the sites are the busiest.
Commissioner Wayne Aycock asked why the county couldn't hire more part-time employees if the convenience site hours are extended.
That is an option, but the county sometimes has problems hiring part-time help now, Honeycutt said.
"But we really wanted to have a little more time to really analyze the whole convenience center aspect," he said. "We are trying to do this really at as little cost or as little additional cost as possible."