Roanoke calls council meeting to address trash issues

The City of Roanoke announced a called meeting for Thursday at 5:30 p.m. to address ongoing issues with garbage collection in the city.

Roanoke mayor Jill Patterson-Hicks confirmed that the city is exploring a number of options to fill in what have become frequent gaps in garbage collection service in the city. The city is under contract with Amwaste for its collection services, but staffing issues at Amwaste have caused delays to its regular pickup schedule. For example, streets that are scheduled to be picked up on Wednesdays were not picked up until Saturday last week, and some areas have been missed altogether some weeks.

The city has begun to explore the possibility of creating its own in-house garbage collection operation, but Patterson-Hicks said that it would likely take six months or more to fully implement such an operation.

It is hoped that the council at Thursday’s meeting will find some sort of stop-gap measure that will help shore up service until a more permanent solution can be found.

Franklin Road grant

The City of Roanoke was awarded a $250,000 grant the Alabama Department of Transportation’s Rebuild Alabama fund last Thursday. The money is earmarked to be used toward funding the city’s planned resurfacing of Franklin Road.

Roanoke was one of nine municipalities statewide to receive funds from this grant program, which does not require any matching funds from the city.

This is a separate grant from the Community Development Block Grant that Roanoke previously agreed to apply for. That application is for a $500,000 grant, which would require $50,000 of matching funds from the city, and is still pending.

The estimated cost of repaving Franklin Road is just over $500,000, but could go up between now and the time the project goes out for bids.