Council Approves Delay to Changes in Leaf and Limb Pickup

By Kristen Meriwether, Publisher

After approval by the Smithville City Council during its budget process, the city was expected to start on-demand leaf and limb pickup when the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

This would remove $10 per month from residents' utility bills for leaf and limb pickup and go to an on-demand service, using SeeClickFix to request, at $15 per 4-cubic-yard load.

But with the calendar inching closer to Oct. 1, the city requested a delay in implementation, citing technology issues that could disrupt billing.

“The only problem I'm worried about is if we take this back and I go by your house, and I pick up your limbs, and I charge you $15, am I going to be able to get it on to our technology to charge you for it? And I don't know,” Public Works Director Edward Balusek said at Wednesday’s council meeting.

The city is in the middle of changing its technology systems and it has not been going smoothly. The conversion is not expected to be done by Oct. 1.

Balusek also mentioned that the city’s alleys have recently been filled with leaves and limbs by residents trying to avoid the on-demand fee for pickup. That backlog, coupled with the unresolved technology issues, led Balusek to recommend extending the start date to the end of the year.

Council Member Brandon Dunham pushed back on the request for a delay, saying the $10 decrease on the utility bill was sold to offset the new $6.25 fee to pay off the tax note.

“I understand that it's a large workload,” Dunham said. “I just thought that this was figured out before.”

The council discussed a need for educating the public on the changes, something that has not happened since the change in service was passed last month as part of the budget process.

“I want to be realistic about this, and we do have a need for education. We clearly have technical difficulties in being able to get it implemented in-house,” Council Member Mitch Jameson said. “So I'm asking, if we're going to do this, we might as well delay until Dec. 1.”

The council voted 4-1 in favor of delaying the implementation of the on-demand service until Dec. 1, with council member Dunham casting the lone nay vote.

Since the Master Fee Schedule, which took away the $10 fee for leaf and limb pickup, was approved by council last week, it will have to come back in its October meeting and revise the fee schedule.

For October and November residents will still pay the full $48.50 for the “garbage” section of their utility bill. In December that is expected to decrease to $38.50.

The $6.25 fee to pay back the tax note, however, will begin Oct. 1.

Smithville Texas News offered to work on a video with the city to provide an educational resource for residents about the new service and how it works. Look for that video on our YouTube channel next week.