Starkville aldermen relaxed several city ordinances Tuesday to help speed up debris removal following last week’s storm that downed numerous trees.
Throughout town, numerous piles of trunks and limbs remained curbside Wednesday as Starkville’s Sanitation and Environmental Services Department lacks the proper equipment to assist in their removal. Several city rules also impeded workers from tending to the piles.
Aldermen granted a temporary 40-day waiver, retroactively beginning when the storm hit Oct. 13, to an ordinance requiring all curbside debris to fall within specific dimensions — 8 inches in diameter and 10 feet in length — for city removal, thereby allowing workers access to intermingled limbs and branches of all sizes.
The board also waived its per-tonnage landfill drop-off fees for the same time period and declared all code enforcement citations stemming from improper debris management to be null and void.
Aldermen, including Ward 2’s Lisa Wynn, took exception to city workers who issued yellow code reminders just days after the storm to those affected by debris. She repeatedly held up an example of the reminder and asked the public if issuing such notices so soon was in good taste.
Other government entities, including the city’s electric, street, water and sewer departments, pledged to support sanitation’s cleanup efforts with their own dump trucks and drivers.
Originally, Starkville Electric Department General Manager Terry Kemp estimated the Oct. 13 storm knocked out power to at least half of his customers, but Chief Administrative Officer Taylor Adams increased that estimate Tuesday to about 70 percent. About 80 percent of those who lost power had their electric service restored by the end of business hours the next day, he said.
“I am extremely proud of our staff,” Adams told aldermen after Wynn and Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn pressed staff over cleanup issues. “Not to make excuses, but this damage was to the extent we haven’t seen in a while.
“This speaks to a monumental effort of our sanitation and electric employees just to get to a place where we could assess the real nature of the damage we faced and what our cleanup efforts looked like after that,” he added in a statement Wednesday. “Our sanitation department has used every resources at its disposal and has done that for six days a week.”
In other business, the board also:
■ approved up to $10,000 in Lafayette Street sidewalk improvements to remedy slope issues in front of a Tabor Management property re-development;
■ and set Halloween trick-or-treating hours from 5:30-8:30 p.m. on Oct. 31.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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