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36 <br />Orange County, NC <br />Financial Plan and Rate Study for Solid Waste Enterprise Fund <br />3.0 POTENTIAL SOLID WASTE OPERATIONAL <br />CHANGES <br />At the outset of the Study, the County expressed an interest in a brief review of the feasibility of <br />future solid waste operations and financing options. The following discussion is intended to <br />provide a description of the potential options to implement System operational changes intended <br />to achieve the goals of revenue increase and expense reduction, in terms of potential advantages <br />and disadvantages to the County. <br />3.1 MINOR /MISCELLANEOUS COST SAVINGS ITEMS <br />As County staff have noted, multiple small operations changes can aggregate into large impacts <br />on Department effectiveness and efficiencies which could translate into reduced expenses. In this <br />section SCS enumerates minor and miscellaneous cost saving and revenue generating items. <br />3.1 .1 Optimize Collection Center Hours /Days of Operations <br />One of the duties of collection center attendants is to record customer attendance on an hourly <br />basis. The Eubanks and Walnut Grove waste and recycling centers received the most customers <br />in FY 2015 -16, with yearly customer counts of approximately 145,000 and 136,000, <br />respectively. Note that these centers are open for a total of 59 hours per week, while the <br />remaining three centers are only open for 27 hours per week. The Bradshaw center is the least <br />used with approximately 38,000 customer visits in FY 2015 -16. <br />3.1.1.1 Collection Center Use by Month <br />Consider making monthly or seasonal adjustment to waste and recycling center times of <br />operations based on customer participation. In general, time of year does affect collection center <br />use, with more customer participation apparent in the summer and less in the winter. <br />3.1.1.2 Collection Center Use by Day of Week <br />Peak customer attendance occurs on Saturdays, although there is also high attendance on <br />Tuesdays. Peak customer "density" occurs on Sundays by far. The order of most customer visits <br />by day of week to least visits by day of the week is as follows: Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, <br />Sunday, Thursday, and Monday (there are no collection centers open on Wednesdays). The order <br />of busiest or most customer -dense (as determined by most customer visits on a per open hour <br />basis) day of week to least busy day of the week is as follows: Sunday, Saturday, Tuesday, <br />Friday, Thursday, and Monday. If the County were to conduct collection center operations in <br />order to minimize the ratio of operating cost to number of customers served, it should be done <br />with consideration for the busy and less busy days. Customer visits by day of week is displayed <br />in Exhibit 16 and peak customer density is summarized in Exhibit 17. <br />23 <br />