Framed between the branches and turning leaves of a crepe myrtle, city worker John Fuller rakes street leaves into the hose of the Vicksburg Street Department’s leaf vacuum being held by fellow worker Michael Lindsey Tuesday on Baum Street. Under a new city contract, residential yard waste will be picked up by Waste Management Inc. Public street cleaning and sweeping responsibilities will continue under city departments. (The Vicksburg Post/C. Todd Sherman)

City employee Charles Squire says that working in the parks and recreation department isn’t much different from when he picked up tree limbs and other yard waste from Vicksburg homes.

“It’s somewhat the same,” said Squire, who has worked for the city for three years. “It’s basically the same work.”

Squire is one of 17 employees from the city’s street cleaning department who transferred to other departments after Waste Management Inc., a private firm, added picking up rubbish on Nov. 1 to its garbage collection contract with the City of Vicksburg.

Before moving to parks and recreation in October, Squire picked up limbs, leaves and grass clippings placed at curbs. On Tuesday, he spent the day working in Halls Ferry Park cutting grass, maintaining equipment and picking up garbage.

Employees were transferred to various departments, including parks and recreation, landscaping and community service. No full-time employees were laid off, said Lamar Horton, director of human resources.

“As jobs came open we moved them and hired temporary labor until Waste Management took over,” Horton said.

Under the new contract, yard waste is being picked up along with household garbage with regular twice-a-week curbside collection. Other changes include new, uniform 96-gallon trash containers, all of which are supposed to be delivered by the end of this week, weather permitting.

Phones have been ringing at City Hall about the $350,000 expenditure, mostly from elderly residents who say they have no place to store and are unable to wrestle the wheeled plastic receptacles. So far, the city reports taking about 357 orders for smaller, 32-, 48-, or 64-gallon, containers that should arrive in about a month.

The change also idles about $217,826 on new equipment bought last year for the department. It includes a street sweeper which was transferred to the street department and two new trash trucks.

Plans are being made to transfer or sell that equipment, said James “Bubba” Rainer, head of the public works division.

“If some other department needs it we’ll transfer it, or, if not, we’ll surplus it and sell it at auction,” said Rainer adding that the new equipment would replace older equipment that could be sold. Vicksburg has been having auctions at least once per year, and often twice, to sell items that have been purchased but are worn out or no longer needed.

City officials are also in the rare position of insisting the new agreement with Waste Management is saving about $700,000 annually, but saying they were forced to raise collection fees by $1.55 per month per household.

Starting with November bills, households are charged $12.60 per month for garbage collection on their water, sewer and gas.

The increase is expected to add $259,818 into the city’s sanitation fund, and the money previously spent on rubbish collection has been allocated to other departments. The savings were not passed on to the citizens through reductions in taxes or other fees.

Some of the additional revenue for the sanitation department will also come from 700 new accounts including small commercial businesses and about 20 residential customers who were not paying for trash service but were putting out household waste for pickup.

About 8,230 households paid for garbage collection last year.

“We have found some people who were getting the service but not paying for it,” said Tim Smith with the city’s strategic planning department. Those people are now being billed, he said.

Smith said that after all garbage containers have been delivered ,including the smaller containers, the city will instruct Waste Management to no longer collect garbage unless it is placed in the new containers.

City officials have also said that, starting this week, residents can be fined for not putting out trash according to the new rules.

The street cleaning department was created in the mid-1980s to collect waste not included with household garbage under new federal regulations. Previous laws had allowed most all waste to be dumped into any landfill, but new guidelines specify what types of garbage can be dumped where.

New rules also go into effect Jan. 1 that require businesses to have waste containers in some type of enclosed area. City officials said they expect the changes to reduce the amount of litter on the streets.