Sanitation officials say alley collection is inefficient and cost ineffective for the city.
Once a week, homeowners in Dallas return to their yards to make the same trek with their rolling trash and recycle bins. Some push the bins to the back alley for pickup, some roll them out front to the curb. If city sanitation officials have their way, all trash will soon be collected at the street.
Clifton Gillespie, director of the city’s sanitation department, introduced the idea at a Dallas’ Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee last week. Alley conditions vary widely across the city, he said, making alley collection inefficient and cost ineffective.
Alleys in Dallas’ southern sector are often unpaved, overgrown or have pavement so damaged as to be all-but-unnavigable. Most homes there rely on curbside pickup by necessity. On the north side of town, the majority of homes use alley pickup.
Alley pickup requires smaller trucks, which often cause damage as they navigate between fences and under utility lines. The specialized, 9-foot-wide, back-loading vehicles require more employees and cost nearly $7 million more per year to operate. Hundreds of property damage complaints are received each year from homeowners along the route, Council member Gay Donnell Willis shared at the meeting.
Street pickup has its issues all its own.
Cars parked along residential streets make pickup more difficult, and bins lifted higher into the air are more prone to leave litter blowing along the street. Toppled empty bins in the roadway are a blinking green invitation for burglars, indicating residents are away.
“It’s important for the City Council to examine current practices and look for efficiency in city government — I hear this from residents all the time,” Willis told The Advocate. “The Sanitation Department shared a ‘state of the union’ on their business, which is an enterprise service charged monthly vs. covered by residents’ property tax. I’m sensitive to how rates have climbed, and I want to be sure we balance stabilizing trash pick up costs with the desires of our neighbors and the difficulty moving away from alley pick up could create. There is no proposal right now — this was just an update — so there is a lot to be considered before any action is taken.”
Gillispie plans to brief the full city council and solicit resident input before possible changes are made.
“We understand the significance of alley collection services to many Dallas residents and the strong sentiment surrounding the issue,” he wrote in an email to The Advocate. “However, we must also consider the complexities involved in balancing these valued services with the practical realities of our operations.”
