City chief operating officer Doug McGowen is a veteran of the city’s attempts to change one of the most basic city services – garbage pickup.

The efforts began during the administration of Mayor A C Wharton with McGowen as point man before he later became the city’s chief administrative officer and then chief operating officer under Mayor Jim Strickland.

Through nearly eight years at City Hall, McGowen has seen various plans, involving fees for additional bags of garbage and different levels of privatization, come and go.

When the latest plan – a solid waste fee hike based on six months of experience with a restructured system – was rejected by the council this week, there was a silver lining of sorts.

The administration appears, at least, to have dealt with recurring questions about how long sanitation workers are on the job.

Council votes down solid waste fee hikes, delays MLGW rate hike vote

Memphis, like many other cities, has long had a work schedule that rewards sanitation workers for getting their route completed quickly. But when the time at work reached about four hours several years ago, the city started trying to change the schedule.

At the outset of the solid waste fee-hike proposal made last month, council chairman Kemp Conrad asked how long sanitation workers actually work. McGowen said about five hours. But he came back this week to correct that figure and, in the process, deal with most of the council concerns about that part of the issue.

“I did not give you the answer to the question you asked,” McGowen said as he began his committee presentation Tuesday. “I gave you the answer to the question I thought you asked – which was how long are they on the route.”

The answer is five hours and 25 minutes actually in a garbage truck working a route.

But that doesn’t count about a half hour of pre-route work – a 10- to 15-minute briefing and an additional 15 to 20 minutes of making sure trucks are ready to go and a vehicle inspection, he said. After a route is completed, there is about an hour of post-route work.

“There’s no longer where folks come by and kick the tires and assume the trucks are good,” McGowen said. Gas tanks are topped off, the inside and outside of the trucks is cleaned and there is a maintenance checklist.

So it is about a seven-hour work day total on average with plans to increase that amount in 2020 and 2021.

“We would grow to about six-and-a-half hours on the route, 30 minutes pre-route and an hour for post route maintenance,” McGowen said.

What is now the solid waste division also continues to consolidate routes that makes them longer as it loses employees through natural attrition.

McGowen estimates solid waste loses about 40 employees a year through attrition and the number of routes has gone from 108 to 96.

There were a few questions about doing long-term maintenance from council members, but no indication that council members thought the administration was ignoring their concern about an eight-hour workday.

The council voted down the fee hike on third and final reading Tuesday, in part because it was on the agenda with a Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division rate-hike proposal that the council delayed until its Dec. 17 meeting. The solid waste fee is on the monthly utility bill.

McGowen said after the vote Tuesday the administration would confer with council members individually to try to find a way forward on some kind of fee hike.