By Mari Radtke
With spring comes spring cleanup. City councils are making plans for their junk pick up days. The Paullian Council addressed some ideas and some concerns from previous pick ups at their Monday March 1 meeting.
The fall pick up, complicated by COVID-19, left a sour taste with council and city staff. Trash, building materials and huge quantities of those items were brought to curbs for free pick up, even though those are not acceptable items. Some of it left a real mess.
The council is addressing issues associated with making the junk pick up a more difficult day than necessary. One pick up procedure currently under discussion is that pick up not be pick up. On Monday there was extended discussion of making a single collection site in Paullina for residents to bring their discarded items. The traditional scavenger hunt, so to speak, can continue on, but items on curbs must be brought to the drop off no later than its closing time.
The major change is collection is still just a discussion, but with May 7 & 8 having been set as the dates, discussion must lead to a decision pretty quick.
The cost collection with a central delivery location is estimated at $3500 including the cost of collecting appliances. It is expected to also include the roll offs and tonnage. History suggests the city would collect approximately 6 tons of refuse.
The central location system could also relieve the problem of paying for items to be collected and someone “scavenged” it. The price for certain items to be disposed is also under consideration with no decisions made. The topic will be revisited on Monday March 15 at the regular city council meeting.
The snow removal discussion for downtown sidewalks also is continuing. A business owner sent a letter explaining that the policy of cleaning sidewalks depending on if the streets had to be cleaned was insufficient. The street department personnel want to remove the snow from sidewalks before they do the streets so that when they clean the streets they get all the snow removed. But they do not want to clean the sidewalks if the snowfall is not deep enough to clean the streets. The policy lightly touched on time of day for snowfall and removal, but was unclear. Council decided to table the issue and discuss it when snowfall isn’t a pressing issue. The city ordinance clearly puts the onus of sidewalk snow removal squarely with the property owner. Any policy changes will require an ordinance change.
The rates for spray planes to use the Paullina Airport were brought up briefly. At least one elevator that uses the Paullina Airport to spray prefers to make a donation rather than pay a fee. The council is considering a rate increase for use of the airport. The matter remains under discussion.