Woodfin – At the last Woodfin Board of Commissioners meeting, Woodfin Administrator Eric Hardy told the board that the town’s public works department was working overtime to catch up with brush collection.
“We’ve had some calls about brush collection, and I’ve mentioned that we’ve had some overtime,” Hardy stated to the commissioners. He believes part of the problem is that contractors, who have historically removed brush that they had created, might not be doing so now. “The theory has been if you’re a hired contractor that you take away the brush that you cut down or create.”
Hardy said the only way to know if contractors created the brush is to “catch them,” which is problematic given those contractors might be working on the weekend. “The town doesn’t care who cuts it down if we have to control it a different way.”
After having the public works director study how two other towns in the area handle brush pick-up, he proposed a solution to have public works collect a limit of two cubit feet per location per week. Two cubit feet is a pile of brush about the feet wide by three feet tall by six feet long. Anything over that would be left until the next week until all brush is removed. According to Hardy, this will allow all the areas to be served each week and there will not be a policing for contractors who might create the brush.
“So the benefit is that they [public works workers] get all the way around the service area in a week’s time. Whereas right now, one side, they take two or three trucks, they take down to the tree place and they just run out of time,” explained Hardy. “If a contractor piles up three weeks worth of brush, it takes them three weeks to collect it.”
Hardy said the town plans to implement the new policy starting October first and plans in the meantime to start an information campaign to inform residents.