- May 4, 2024
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Matt Ballew doesn’t mind starting his trash run at 6 a.m.
The sun isn’t up yet, so he beats the heat.
He pulls up to the Longboat Key Public Works building a few minutes before 6 a.m. No time is wasted as he walks from his car to the back gate to get the white Ford F-150 pickup truck. Behind the truck is a towable, green dumpster.
The first stop is the boat ramp near the north end of the island. Ballew dons a bright headlight as he opens each of the trash cans. He examines the contents of each, lifting the lighter cans and emptying the contents into the more filled ones. Like dominoes falling, he goes down the line to like this so he only has to lift one or two cans above his head and into the towable dumpster.
Just like that, the first stop is done in about two minutes. He hops back into his truck and heads to the next stop — the Broadway Street Public Beach Access.
Ballew has been with the town of Longboat Key for about six months. Aside from trash duty, which he has to do on a rotation, he manages Bayfront Park, helps with the mowing route and responds to roadkill cleanup.
The entire trash route usually takes him about two hours, he says, three on holidays.
“We’ll fill up one of these pretty quickly,” he says, pointing to the dumpster.
During the busy holiday weekends, Ballew says the inconvenient part is having to haul a full dumpster back to Public Works in the middle of the route.
At the second stop of the morning, Ballew finds the first of two pop-up tents that day. Items like that and lightly used beach chairs are commonly found by the public beach access trash cans. It’s mostly people that fly in to visit, he guesses.
He spot cleans every site he stops at, checking the surrounding area for any trash that was left in the parking lot or around the cans. At one, he finds a used diaper, something he says is also pretty common.
Around 6:30 a.m., the sun peeks over the horizon, giving Ballew enough light to eventually turn off his headlight. He steadily works his way to the last stop, at Overlook Park.
With every trash can he empties, he turns his face away.
You don’t want anything splattering on you, he said.
The route is finished at 7:15 a.m., just over an hour after he started.
“Good day for me,” Ballew says.
Not having to unload the dumpster halfway through the route saved him about 30 minutes.
Mark Richardson starts every morning around 6:30 a.m., as the streets, facilities, parks and recreation manager for Longboat Key. He’s a morning person, and likes that his eight-hour days are over around 2 or 3 p.m.
He’s been with the town for 17 years, and in his current position for 15. He started as just recreation manager, and then the titles kept accumulating as staff left or retired, and he took on more responsibilities.
“I basically do everything except for wastewater and water,” Richardson said.
Prior to working for Longboat Key, Richardson worked for Clearwater for four years, and Manatee County for 14 years prior to that. He’s been in the public works game since he was 18 years old.
The trash collection system of his Public Works team is simple: every Monday and Friday, his team hits the public beach access points to empty the trash cans and spot clean areas. The team adds Sunday collection days during busy times of the year, and on weekend holidays. For Richardson, it seems like the seasons have worsened.
“Ever since COVID, the beaches have gotten busier,” Richardson said, adding that the business hasn’t seemed to let up.
Every week, one of Richardson’s Public Works employees is on the rotation for trash duty. That worker has to do the collection Monday, Friday and Sunday if necessary. Some of the newer guys pick up the shifts to acquire more comp time, Richardson said.
At most, the entire run takes around three hours, according to Richardson.
Waste Management handles residential trash collection on Mondays and Thursdays, and also collects beach access trash on Mondays. Richardson and the Public Works team still collect on Mondays because their trucks are able to get back to certain access points that the Waste Management trucks aren’t able to, like the one on Broadway Street.
On days when there's no overlap with Waste Management, the public works employee doing the trash run makes 14 stops. If Waste Management is also on duty, there's only five stops that public works has to make.
Currently, Richardson’s Public Works team comprises six workers, still two short of where he wants to be. Last March, he only had four workers.
One of the reasons for the shortage that he suggested is that newer generations don’t want to do manual labor. But what the department pays is “pretty darn good,” for a job only requiring a high school diploma, he said.
Since hiring new staff, he's revamped his ways. Richardson said he was used to having veteran employees until about a year ago, when he had to train new workers. This included adding maps of the trash and mowing routes in the trucks and creating a small library of “what to do.”
Richardson has also had to revamp the physical aspects of collecting trash.
In 2021, he had to purchase an additional towable dumpster, and he just purchased another, he said. The team also has three larger, portable dumpsters that it places at busier beach access points during holidays.
“I’m just running my brain trying to figure out how to get people to put trash in the cans,” Richardson said.
Some additional cans have been added to beach access points, but Richardson said there’s a fine balance between too little and too many cans.
One of the issues Richardson and Ballew frequently see is when trash gets jammed in the swing lid of the cans, then people will assume the trash can is full. The same goes for cans without lids, if a large bag clogs up the top opening.
About a month ago, Richardson began experimenting with removing the swing lids from some trash cans. This eliminates the need for people to push the barrier inwards and throw the trash in. The newer ones can be harder to press inward, and some people just don’t like touching the swing lids with their hands, leading to trash on or around the garbage cans.
So far, Richardson thinks the experiment has been working.
Another problem is when people try to stuff large objects in the trash cans, like foldable chairs, then others will usually avoid using that can.
“That takes up a whole 32-gallon trash can because someone put a chair in there,” Richardson said.
Richardson also purchased another type of garbage can lid that is lifted off the can, that he thinks people will be more open to using. But he’s been thinking that maybe the best solution is removing the lid altogether on weekends.
No matter what improvements the team tries to implement, Richardson said there will always be outliers.
“You’re always going to have trash on the ground because some people just don’t care,” Richardson said.
