potential increase to the Town of Highlands monthly sanitation fees will be among the topics for discussion during the board of commissioners’ retreat on Thursday.
The need to raise the rate for garbage pickup service was laid out by town manager Josh Ward and finance director Rebecca Shuler during a finance committee meeting on Friday.
“We are running into a lot of overtime in the sanitation department and when that happens we have to use staff from other departments to cover sanitation,” Ward said. “Paying employees time and a half from other departments to work overtime adds up quickly.”
Shuler noted that the board budgeted $45,000 in overtime costs for the sanitation department in the current fiscal year, but that amount will not be enough.
“We have already paid out roughly $43,000 in overtime for this fiscal year, which runs through the end of June,” Schuler said. “In order to make the sanitation budget whole, we will need to raise the rate for service.”
The increase proposed Friday was $2.25 per month for both residential and commercial customers. In Highlands, residential trash is picked up twice each week while commercial trash is picked up seven days per week.
If the proposed rate increase is approved, it will generate $56,457 in residential service revenue and $6,264 in commercial revenue for a total increase of $62,721.
Finance committee member Amy Patterson asked why the town is running into so much overtime in one department and if hiring an additional full time employee for that department would alleviate the overtime issue.
“When you look at putting $45,000 in the budget for overtime, and then going beyond that number, you have to think a fulltime position would be less expensive,” Patterson said. “For next year, could we simply add an employee and not have to budget overtime at all?”
Ward noted that the staffing issues in the sanitation department are wider in scope than one new employee could fill.
“Finding people to hire in that department can be difficult and because our overtime is pretty much always on weekends, I don’t know if one person would be enough,” Ward said. “Filling a sanitation job where the person has to work every Saturday and Sunday would be tough. Setting up a weekend rotation might be possible, but that is something we would have to look into further before I can say for certain whether or not that would alleviate the overtime problem.”
Another potential solution to the overtime issue kicked around by the committee was cutting back residential garbage pickup to one day per week.
Ward noted that many municipalities across the region and across the state have gotten out of the trash collection business all together due to the cost of operation.
“At some point in the future it may become prudent to contract with a private company to provide that service and get out of the garbage business,” Ward said. “That is something we can discuss in further detail at a later time, but Franklin did that 25 years ago and it has worked fine for them. It’s something to consider.”
While no long-term solution was agreed upon, the finance committee did agree to propose the $2.25 per month rate increase at the commissioners’ retreat in order to make the sanitation budget whole.