(Shenandoah) -- Costs were up, but the actual amount of materials collected was down in this year's Shenandoah Citywide Cleanup Days.
By unanimous vote Tuesday evening, the Shenandoah City Council approved a report on the 2022 event held in May, as well as a check to cover the costs. In his report to the council, Shenandoah Sanitation Operations Manager Dave Riley says the amount of roll-offs sent to the Page County Landfill from the three-day event dropped from 45 in 2021 to 33 this year.
"Basically, our trash tonnage and everything for 2022 ended up being 133 ton that was taken to the landfill," said Riley. "Concrete, the city took care of that because they had a truck down there. We didn't have any charge on that. Lumber was combined with the trash. That's the way the landfills take it. Scrap metal came up to 10.91 tons, compared to last year's 24.92--a big difference in metal. So, obviously, there's things getting cleaned up around the area, in town and everything, which is a great deal."
Riley says this year's costs totaled around $17,170. Councilman Richard Jones noted that while the tonnage collected dropped 19%, labor costs increased 30%, and the company's overall costs to the city rose by 12.7%. Riley noted that Shenandoah Sanitation has absorbed increased costs for a long time.
"With the fuel and the labor, and the equipment costs, it is a tremendous amount of stress on our business," said Riley. "So, we had to do a price increase on this at the first of the year."
Riley says the company raised its hauling rate from $240 to $286 per haul due to increasing costs. He adds labor costs rose in order to secure adequate staff for cleanup days.
"We had to go up to competitive labor costs just to get people to actually work," he said. "I mean, we were down three people at one time. Without raising that labor cost, we could not have filled out positions, and basically not perform to have the citywide (cleanup)."
Riley attributed the decline in materials collected this year to a big increase in collections in 2021. City officials canceled the event in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. This year was also the first in which participants were required to show proof of residency within city limits. Both Riley and council members indicated support for maintaining the residency requirement for next year's event.
