City Targets November 1st Start for Automated Trash Collection
FRANKFORT, Ind. – The Frankfort City Council took its first formal step towards implementing automated trash collection at the Monday meeting with passing on first-reading an amendment to an ordinance regarding trash collection and disposal. The council set November 1st as the implementation date after asking Jason Forsythe, street superintendent, for his recommendation.
The city will acquire two new Labrie automated trash collection vehicles, each having a 12-foot extendable arm, plus nearly 5,500 trash collection totes for residential pick-up from Best Equipment Company of Indianapolis . An additional used automated trash collection vehicle will be purchased at a later date.
Prior to November 1st, the council will need to pass the amended ordinance on two additional readings as well as secure financing for the purchase of the vehicles and rolling totes.
“A couple of things that really impressed me about (automation trash pick-up); one of them is safety,” said Mayor Judy Sheets. “When you think about our guys on the back of the trash trucks – that’s a very dangerous job. I don’t know if you’ve followed them before but I have around town. People pay no attention to it. There’s a possibility of them falling or when they pick up bags of trash – they get splattered with all sorts of things. Needle sticks. There’s all these things that people don’t think about.”
Forsythe talked about the work that has taken place behind the scenes to get to the point of council action and what automated trash collection will mean for the residents as well as the employees at the street department.
“This has been a lot of hard work for a lot of months – the guys deserve it,” said Forsythe. “It’s going to make them much safer. It’s going to make the community look much nicer than it does. You’re not going to have the bags all over the place. A lot of work to do moving forward – getting totes ready, getting equipment taken care of, obviously getting the financial stuff done.”
Mayor Sheets does not see an increase in user fees when moving to automated trash collection. And, the city will provide one 96-gallon tote to each residential collection stop that can hold 6 to 7 30-gallon trash bags. Each tote has a serial number and will be recorded to the customers address. Additional tote(s) will be available to residents at an additional monthly charge.
With automation comes an increase in collection speed and opportunity to do other items not centered on trash collection.
An automated collection vehicle can do 1 stop per 7 seconds. The current collection method completes approximately 600 stops a day with 3 people while automation can do 900 stops a day with 1 person doing both the driving and operating the joystick-controlled retractable collection arm.
Forsythe provided an example of how the current Monday collection in the southwest quadrant of the city would improve while allowing him to assign workers to do additional tasks.
“The southwest on Monday route usually gets done [around] 1, 1:30 – we’ll be done by 11, 11:30 on Monday,” said Forsythe. “We could pick up the entire city, that’s 5,500 stops in about two and a half days.”
“Like one guy got finished with a route and we needed mowing done, he could go out and mow a couple of city lots before he went home.”
The next city council meeting is Monday, August 22nd at 7 pm in the council chamber of Old Stoney.
