Recycling contracts are ready
City leaders want to know when the North Rome site will be cleaned up after the move.
Contracts leading to the relocation of the Rome-Floyd County Recycling Center are expected to be signed before the week is over.
The center will be relocated from 405 Watters St. in North Rome to 412 Lavender Drive in West Rome.
City commissioners on the Joint Solid Waste Commission, Bill Collins and Sundai Stevenson, pressed Floyd County Public Works Director Michael Skeen on a timetable for being out of the Watters Street location and a budget for cleaning up and beautifying the site.
Skeen estimated the move will likely take six to nine months but added the existing site will continue to be the face of recycling for the public.
“It will be the only place where the public will be able to make face-to-face contact with someone in recycling,” Skeen said.
Once the move to Lavender Drive is completed, the North Rome site will remain a collection point and will be staffed on a limited basis. Hours have not been determined.
Skeen said he can’t pinpoint a budget for physical improvements to the North Rome site because he had no idea what the bids for new equipment and a sprinkler system at the Lavender Drive building will come in at.
The 2013 special purpose, local option sales tax package included $1,379,000 for the recycling program.
Skeen tentatively budgeted $1,270,000 for the move to Lavender Drive which includes the cost of the new sprinkler system and new equipment.
Rome Public Services Director Kirk Milam responded to concerns expressed last month from Oakdene community residents about the appearance of Ira Levy’s Paper Recovery recycling center in the neighborhood.
Levy paid for new shrubbery while city officials provided the labor to enhance the vegetative buffer between the historic subdivision and Levy’s center. A series of Nellie Stevens holly trees have been planted. “We’re going to let them grow as tall and as thick as we can,” Milam said. “We can’t build a wall as tall as those will grow.”
Milam also said Levy has planted the same species of trees at the Lavender Drive location to serve as a buffer at the new recycling center.
Levy told the committee that approximately 85 percent of the necessary upgrades to the roof on the building at Lavender Drive are complete.
Assistant Floyd County Manager Gary Burkhalter said a $265,000 budget deficit had been projected for the recycling center in 2016 and the final shortfall amounted to $259,000.
‘We’re going to let them grow as tall and as thick as we can. We can’t build a wall as tall as those will grow.’ Kirk Milam, Rome Public Services director