CITY OF HENDERSONVILLE
REFUSE AND BRUSH COLLECTION STUDY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the city’s request, MTAS researched best management practices in
ten (10) Tennessee cities for brush collection and residential and commercial
refuse collection. The attached report details the findings. The report and
supplemental research information has been provided to the Public Works
Director.
BRUSH
The quantity of brush varies widely from city to city. Many cities do
not quantify brush collection, but of those that do Hendersonville had the
highest tonnage – 25,000 tons for FY2003 and 13,200 tons for FY2002.
Hendersonville and Columbia devote fewer laborers and equipment to
brush collection than any of the cities surveyed. The result is reflected in the
frequency of pickup. Hendersonville’s pickup goal is once per month.
Often, this goal is not met. Five of the cities surveyed pickup brush once per
week; three cities pickup two times per month.
Recommendations
1. Re-evaluate the city’s collection goal of once per month pickup. All
the cities in this study have pickups more frequent than once per
month. Even if Hendersonville’s collection goal remains once/month,
the following recommendations apply.
2. Publish and adhere to a routine brush collection schedule.
Homeowners should be familiar with and be able to depend upon the
city’s brush collection schedule.
3. Continue to use city crews to collect brush. Hendersonville’s
experience with contracting brush collection demonstrates that city
crews are much less expensive than contractors.
4. Phase out the chipper and replace it with a knuckleboom/truck
combination. Knucklebooms are the preferred collection equipment
for brush piles.
5. In addition to replacing the chipper with a knuckleboom, add another
knuckleboom/truck combination and crew. Inadequate equipment and
manpower cause the city to fall behind on its goal of monthly
collection. Currently Hendersonville has 2 knucklebooms. MTAS
recommends 4.
6. Do not begin “new” brush/yard waste collection services such as a
leaf vacuuming operation, especially as long as BFI collects bagged
leaves. Vacuuming leaves costs considerably more than bagged
collection because it is labor intensive.
7. Adopt, publish and aggressively enforce an ordinance to charge for
excessive brush and yard waste. Notify homeowners and tree
trimmers that the city will charge to collect brush left by tree trimming
contractors. The fee should be high enough to encourage compliance.
The Public Works Director estimates that it costs up $19/pile to
collect brush. A fee in the range of $30/pile may be appropriate.
COMMERCIAL COLLECTION
Experience from the cities surveyed in this project (as well as MTAS’
experience with other cities) shows that once any solid waste service is
begun, it is very difficult to discontinue. At this time, commercial customers
in Hendersonville contract with private vendors for refuse collection. Why
would the city consider adding service for commercial customers?
MTAS understands that a primary reason relates to how solid waste
collection and disposal services are funded. In Hendersonville, households
pay an annual fee of ~$128. This fee does not cover costs. The balance is
funded by the city’s general fund. Commercial customers also pay taxes to
the city (and at a higher assessment rate than households), but receive no
sanitation services. Thus there is an inequity in tax-funded services being
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provided to businesses compared to services being provided to households.
The equity issue could be neutralized if fees were set to cover sanitation
services. Then general tax dollars would not subsidize garbage collection
and disposal costs.
Another reason relates to flow-control. Since Hendersonville and the
other governments of Sumner County subsidize operations at the Sumner
County Resource Authority, there is an incentive to keep the garbage
generated in Sumner County flowing to and tipping at the Resource
Authority. Currently, refuse collected from commercial customers in
Hendersonville is likely being disposed of out of county since tipping fees at
nearby landfills are less costly than the tipping fee at the Resource
Authority.
Recommendations
1. MTAS recommends funding refuse collection/disposal services via
fees. If operations were fee funded, then the city and the customers
would know the true costs of refuse services. Equity in service
delivery would not be an issue, and sanitation service decisions could
more easily be based on costs. However, MTAS recognizes that
Hendersonville’s sanitation services are not currently set up to be
financially self-sufficient, and that it may take some time to move
from an operation funded by a mix of fees and general fund monies to
one funded entirely from fees.
2. If Hendersonville decides to begin service to some commercial
customers, MTAS recommends:
 Gather information about the number of probable commercial
customers, locations, amounts of refuse, etc.
 Charge fees that cover all (or most) of the costs associated with
collection and disposal. If collection and disposal services for
commercial customers are subsidized from the general fund, the
subsidy should be kept low. In order to determine collection costs,
cost proposals from BFI or other vendors must be obtained. Then
tipping fees and administrative overhead costs must be considered.
 Start with small commercial customers who do not use bulk
containers. These commercial customers would use containers
similar to those used by households. The number of total
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containers and the frequency of collection should be similar to
residential customers.
 Provide service to commercial customers only if (1) the existing
contract with BFI can be amended to accommodate the
commercial customers, or (2) a contract with a second private
vendor can be secured. The city does not have crews to service
commercial customers, and MTAS does not recommend that the
city get into this business.
The city should consider the impact of adding customers on the public
works staff. This staff is already overburdened with the large number of
sanitation complaints from residential customers. Adding commercial
customers would almost certainly add extra work to the city’s staff.
RESIDENTIAL COLLECTION
Hendersonville is the only city of the ten surveyed that provides twice
per week collection. Hendersonville is one of four cities that provide
backdoor collection. Backdoor collection is a higher level of service and
thus more expensive than curbside collection. All the cities with backdoor
service reported higher levels of customer complaints than those cities with
curbside service. In 1996, Bartlett switched from backdoor service to
curbside service. They reported that customer complaints had been running
over 200 per month prior to the switch, but dropped to under 200 per year
almost immediately after the switch.
Recommendations
1. Customer Fees - since the BFI contract has been extended, there are
few immediate changes required in residential collection. However,
MTAS recommends that the city consider changes in the way refuse
collection services are funded. If the city accepts MTAS’
recommendation on financial self-sufficiency discussed under
Commercial Collection above, customer fees should be set to cover
costs of collection and disposal. The city could phase in financial
self-sufficiency over the next couple of years.
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2. Contract Management – with the history of a large number of
sanitation complaints, MTAS recommends that the city assign a fulltime staff position to manage sanitation services.
3. Public Input - while phasing in fees to cover sanitation services,
devote more attention to educating the public about the costs of
various types of service. Tie service to costs, and seek public input
before making changes. Consider using a citizen survey.
4. Plan Ahead - well before the current BFI contract expires, seek
request for proposals (RFP) from vendors for various types of service.
By seeking cost proposals for different levels of service, the city and
its customers would have more information about the type of service
they want to purchase and how much they are willing to pay. MTAS
recommends that city staff also respond to the RFP to gage how city
crews compare with contractors. An RFP could be structured to
request costs for various options:
a. Alternative A – backdoor service two times per week
b. Alternative B – backdoor service one time per week
c. Alternative C – curbside service one time per week, customer
provides the containers
d. Alternative D – curbside service one time per week,
standardized carts (either city pays for the cart or customer pays
for the cart), etc.
5. MTAS recommends that the city seriously consider curbside
collection. Curbside collection costs are considerably less than
backdoor collection, complaint levels are lower and more competition
from vendors may be available. Backdoor service is highly
susceptible to labor shortage. This causes the contractor to
continuously train because of high turnover. A labor force unfamiliar
with backdoor collection points in turn leads to more problems and
customer complaints.
MTAS recommends that the city evaluate sanitation services annually.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this report. We enjoyed working
with the Public Works Director on this project.
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