There are two sides to the story of one-sided trash pickup in Greenfield.
Benefits and costs.
First, let’s talk about the benefits. We have to applaud the town’s municipal leaders, at the Department of Public Works in this case, for finding innovative ways to save taxpayers money. The DPW is currently surveying residents about the idea of having residents in most parts of town put out their trash on just one side of the street.
Allowing trash collectors to drive just one-way down a street would save the town 30 to 40 percent on fuel, mileage and collection time, and would also have environmental benefits, according to the DPW. Exactly what those environmental benefits would be is unclear. Exactly how much money would be saved on fuel is unclear.
How many staff hours would be saved is unclear.
Time saved presumably could be applied to other tasks that residents always expect the public works crews to handle, like paving, patching roads, maintaining parks, fixing water and sewer problems, plowing snow in cold times.
Major, high volume roads such as High, Main and Federal streets would be exempt from the program.
The costs? That depends on your circumstances. For some, like the elderly and handicapped, carrying trash cans or bags across the street might be difficult, and for some it might be simply an unwanted nuisance. Some might not want their neighbor’s trash left at the edge of their yard each week, especially if the trash is poorly package and retrieval of empty cans delayed. Others might not care to impose on their neighbors if the situation is reversed. And who’s to say which residents get stuck hauling their trash across the street? Should they alternate. How confusing could that get?
Jeanine Greaves, the DPW’s administrative assistant, said the feedback she’s heard so far has been mixed. Some residents are concerned placing trash in front of a neighbor’s house could cause arguments if that trash got strewn across their yard by an animal or the wind, for example.
The savings in time and money is attractive — yet another way Mayor William Martin’s administration has succeeded reasonably well over the years to curtail the town’s spending. But are the savings sufficient to outweigh the costs?
A survey the town has sent to residents about this idea doesn’t provide the sort of detail we need to do the cost-benefit analysis, which is too bad. It’s hard to know whether to support such a plan without more information, which could invalidate the survey’s results.
We’d like to see a more detailed breakdown of benefits at least, and then perhaps residents could balance that against their own assessment of the inconvenience and other personal costs.