City prices alley clean-up at up to $1.2 million

Cleaning up and widening the City’s alleys to allow garbage trucks to collect new poly carts will cost between $650,000 and $1.2 million and take two to three years, depending on whether City workers or a contractor does the work, Public Works Director Michael Jacoba told the City Council last week.

The City has had problems with the recent rollout of individual household poly carts that replaced communal dumpsters under a new contract with garbage service provider Waste Connections.

The company required the City to switch to poly carts starting this year. The poly carts were supposed to be picked up in the alleys but had to be set out at least four feet from fences and other structures but some alleys were too narrow to accommodate the new pickup points. Waste Connections also complained that its trucks were getting stuck in the rutted alleys.

After citizens complained, the Council temporarily changed the pickup location to the City streets, and asked Mr. Jacoba to get a cost analysis for widening the alleys and fixing the gravel roads.

“It would be nice if it could be done in a year but I don’t see that being done. It think there are 106, 107 alleys in the city. We have 6-½ miles of alleys,” Mr. Jacoba said. “I guess we could start repairing streets if that’s something y’all want to do.”

“It’s just a lot of money, that’s for sure,” Mayor Rue Rogers said of the estimates.

Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker noted that the alleys “are going to have to be widened,” adding that underground utility lines and fences that encroach on the easements will have to be dug up and moved. Alleys on the north side of town should be 20 feet wide and those on the south side of town east of Avenue F should measure 30 feet, said Olney Police Sgt. Dustin Hudson, who also handles code enforcement.

“The thing that keeps getting lost is the alleys are owned by the homeowner. It’s not the city’s alley and the homeowner is really required to maintain it,” Mr. Parker said. “They were supposed to be doing it all along.”

He suggested that the cost of cleaning the alleys could be split among property owners.

Councilmember Tommy Kimbro argued that it was up to the City to maintain the alleys because it held the right-ofways for utility lines. “We have never been required to do maintenance on it,” he said. “We are changing all kinds of rules.”

Mayor Rogers said the cost analysis “gives us a first glimpse of what it’s going to take.”

“This is something we are not going to solve in a one-hour City Council meeting,” Mayor Rogers said. He suggested the Council form a subcommittee to research ordinances pertaining to alley maintenance, review any code enforcement issues in each alley and get input from Waste Connections.

“Before we can make a decision that this is something that we want to do we’ve got to have a better understanding of what we are dealing with,” he said. “And at the end of the day, even if the decision is still not to move the polys to the alley we can’t abandon the alleys. We are going to have to do some form of maintenance.”