It looks as though the current schedule for the county’s garbage collection sites will remain as they are after a meeting of the Public Works Committee last week. Recently County Mayor Matt Adcock announced a revision in the hours of operations of the sites, announcing that the sites would have more uniform hours and that they will be closed on Sundays.
The new policy took effect in October 2022 with the sites now open Mondays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. but closed all day on Sundays. Adcock stated the change was needed to give the 24 part time employees Sundays off, and to bring more uniformity to the operating hours.
But since the change, some have expressed concerns about the hours, particularly with the upcoming tourist season on Center Hill Lake. During the regular commission meeting in March, concerned resident and businessman, Robin Driver, asked that the action be reconsidered. Driver said with the sites closed on Sundays, weekend visitors would have no place to take their garbage after their trips.
“Since you have passed the ordinance to close the dump sites down, myself or my staff have received calls from people wanting to know where do we take our trash? These dump sites have been open on Sundays for many, many years and I have no idea what the reason was for closing them. I am very concerned that this is going to cause a huge problem. The vast majority of these people come here and stay the weekend and then they leave to go home. When they leave on Sundays, they need some place to take their trash.”
“If you or I have to wait until Monday, it’s not a big deal,” Driver continued. “We can let it set there for an extra day. These folks are not going to let it (garbage) set in these vacation homes for a week until they are back the next week. I am here to ask you to reconsider your position on the trash situation.”
During that meeting some county commissioners asked that the public works committee meet with the county mayor to discuss the issue in more detail. During a meeting of the county public works committee, County Mayor Matt Adcock said he stands by the decision he made last fall to close the sites on Sundays and members of the committee and the county commission as a whole may be powerless to change the policy even if they want to.
County Mayor Adcock said he has the authority to make the policy unilaterally and doesn’t intend to change it. Even if the county commission could legally override the County Mayor’s decision, the public works committee could have only voted to make a recommendation to the full commission for a vote.
“When considering the pros and cons of the convenience sites being closed on Sundays, the only con I can think of is it being an inconvenience to the people wanting to dispose of their trash on Sundays, but most counties around us are not open on Sundays,” said Adcock.
“As for the pros, when the sites are closed on Sundays it prevents people from other counties where sites are also closed from dumping in our convenience sites. This saves us money from not having to use our funds to dispose of their trash and from dumps getting too full for our citizens to dispose of their trash.”
DeKalb County’s Solid Waste Department receives no local property tax dollars. The entire department is funded from a variety of other taxes including the county’s share of the state beer tax, wholesale beer tax, bank excise tax, state revenue sharing-TVA funds, a portion of the county’s local option sales tax, payments-in-lieu of taxes, and alcoholic beverage tax.
