Cape city workers go to Senior Center to sell residents on trash pickup plan

Tim Gramling worked hard Thursday to make a sale.

Gramling, Cape Girardeau's Public Works Department director, set out to convince one of the toughest audiences in town that it is time to automate the city's trash pickup: Gramling went to the Cape Girardeau Senior Center.

Gramling's $2 million plan would be funded in part from budget savings from using fewer sanitation workers and in part with a bond issue that would be paid off with savings on annual equipment replacement. He made sure the retirees who showed up for the daily lunch at the center understood they would not pay higher trash collection rates because of the change.

Then there were the other questions. Many wanted to know if they would have to pay for the new trash and recycling bins that will be distributed to make the system work. The answer, Gramling said repeatedly, was no, the city will provide the 22,000 bins -- two for every household at a cost of $800,000. The change must be approved by the Cape Girardeau City Council.

Marilyn Wiggs and Mary Bell Dohogne wanted to know if the two sizes on display, a 64-gallon bin for refuse and a 96-gallon bin for recyclables, were the only sizes offered. Both women live alone and said they generate little trash.

"For one person it is awfully big," Dohogne said. "You ought to have a widow's size."

Gramling wasn't alone in taking questions. He brought along public works staff, including solid waste supervisor Mike Tripp, to help him answer as well as representatives of Armor Equipment, which prepares the truck chassis for use as garbage trucks, and Heil Co., which builds the chassis.

Smaller bins are possible, Tripp said, but the costs for the city may go up.

Florence Lewis asked how sturdy the bins were. The automated system uses an arm that can reach out up to nine feet, grasp the trash container and sweep it over the truck in a quick motion that dumps the contents and returns it to the ground.

John Krejci, regional sales manager for Armor, said during a demonstration of the process that the bins are made with a rotational molding that makes them more flexible and better able to withstand bitter cold that makes other plastics brittle.

Charles Streck said he's worried that he will be unable to move the larger bins down the gravel alley to the location where sanitations workers retrieve his trash. The city allows two 35-gallon trash cans per week; that will be reduced to a single 64-gallon bin.

Tripp had the answer -- the city has a program, used by about 30 residents, that takes the burden off people medically unable to move a trash bin. He expects more to use it because of publicity about the proposed change but not because of the new bins.

The new trash bins are easily moved by tipping them back; they pivot quickly on two wheels and when set down the friction of the base keeps it in place. The bins can be tilted because of the slope of the land or higher or lower than the street and the new truck can still retrieve the trash and replace the bin where it stood.

An important source of savings along with fewer workers -- no employees will be laid off, Gramling said -- will be lower workers' compensation costs. The city sets aside 43 percent of the pay of sanitation workers for possible injury payouts. Because drivers would rarely leave the cab and never lift a bin, they would be reclassified as equipment operators rather than trash throwers. Under that designation, the workers compensation contribution is reduced to 38 percent of payroll.

The new trucks would reduce injuries and danger to the public as well, Krejci said, because of the automated arm. "Now the operators are never in danger of oncoming traffic," he said.

Clinching the sale for many, however, was the convenience. The new recycling bins won't require busting and bundling cardboard boxes and all the recyclables except glass can be mixed together.

"I'm excited," Wiggs said. "I think it is the best idea for the community."

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent addresses:

921 N. Clark Ave., Cape Girardeau, MO

2007 Southern Expressway, Cape Girardeau, MO