It’s probably a little early to start cursing the state over plans to bring automated, or semi-automated, trash collection to Winfield, officials say.
It now appears there could be some leeway.
Talk of a more uniform ? and much more costly ? garbage service surfaced last week when city manager Warren Porter met with city commissioners. The trash talk specifically centered on a worker-safety inspection from the Kansas Dept. of Labor that took place in February.
A state inspector told the city that current trash-collection methods expose workers to blood-borne illness and repetitive-motion type maladies. City trash collectors pick up residential trashcans and manually dump them into a garbage truck.
The city of Winfield has about 4,200 residential customers.
In a letter to the city earlier this month, labor department officials advised the city to switch to a modernized semi-automated or fully-automated system that relies on uniform trash bins that are picked up by machine and dumped into a truck.
But Porter said it now seems possible that public education and employee training efforts might be enough to satisfy the state.
"They appear to be willing to work with us on it," Porter said. "We’re working with them to see what we can get done."
Automated trash service, which would require new trucks for the city and new trashcans for customers, would cost around $1 million to implement, city officials said. The cost is enough that the city would probably defer to a private-sector company to provide trash service locally.
Semi-automated ? which would not require new trucks but would require new trash bins ? would cost around $250,000.
The city has 11 full-time employees in its trash and recycling departments, a fully-automated system would cut that to four full-time workers.
Obviously, Porter said, the city prefers to keep capital expenditures at a minimum to save the city money and keep the cost of trash collection lower. However, the state would make the final call.
Nearby cities like Derby and Mulvane already have switched to a private-sector trash collection program.
Porter expects the city would be given a little time if the state pushed forward with recommendations to switch how trash is collected.
"We assume any change would be on a scheduled basis," he said. "We didn’t initiate any change, we just have to go with what we’re told to do."
In Kansas, the state’s department of labor monitors the well-being of city government employees, whose work safety issues are not governed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Private sector employee safety issues are overseen by OSHA.