Baltimore County has launched a printable calendar of recycling and trash pickup dates after residents complained about not getting one in the mail as in years past.
Residents can now go online, enter their address and print out a calendar customized to their location. The calendar resembles the paper ones that used to be mailed every year and includes dates when pickups are shifted due to holidays, the start and stop of yard waste collection and other useful information.
The link to create the calendar went live last week.
“It was just a matter of working with our IT office and our solid waste department,” Ron Snyder, a spokesman for the Baltimore County Department of Public Works and Transportation. “We got it done and made it as simple as possible.”
Receiving the old calendars in the mail was an end-of-the-year tradition for many residents who liked to post them on their refrigerators as a ready reference. The 12-page mailer that arrived in December had the usual information but no calendar and no explanation for its absence.
To make matters worse, the new guide gave the wrong dates for four of the seven holidays (Christmas was listed as falling on Dec. 26, for example). A two-page correction mailer was sent in January but didn’t specify what was wrong in the original one – leaving residents scratching their heads all over again. Balitimore Fishbowl wrote about the issue last month.
“I’m happy that the County was responsive to constituent complaints,” said Phoebe Evans Letocha, vice president of the Towson Communities Alliance. “Having the printable calendar helps citizens adhere to scheduled trash and recycling days and facilitates a cleaner environment in our neighborhood.”
Snyder said the department always intended to have a digital calendar available for residents to print but it took time to find a program that worked with the county’s platform.
In the meantime, council members and the county executive heard complaints from residents.
“It’s a good step,” said County Councilman David Marks. “I still think many senior citizens and those less proficient with computers will prefer mailed calendars.”
Dropping the calendar from the guides was both a cost-saving and sustainability gesture, Snyder said. Preparing and sending 243,000 guides costs about $160,000 a year out of the agency’s $193.5 million annual budget. And that doesn’t include the manpower required to manually program 115 routes into the mailings.
“When you make changes sometimes there are hiccups along the way,” Snyder said.
The digital system will also permit residents to access the calendar on a smart phone or download it to a computer. Officials are now working with senior centers and library branches to help residents without printers, Snyder said.
“Those who still have issues can reach out to us and we’ll find a solution,” he said.
Someone in that department learned how to deploy Python.