Grant helps fund new litter abatement officer for Rusk
Jan. 22—Rusk has received a grant from the East Texas Council of Governments to support creation of a litter abatement position for the city.
ETCOG recently announced $45,000 in grants from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was awarded to assist in waste minimization efforts in ETCOG's 14-county region.
Applicants were eligible to apply for grants in several categories including local enforcement, litter and illegal dumping clean up and community collection events, source reduction and recycling, local solid waste management plans, citizens' collection stations and small registered transfer stations, household hazardous waste management, technical studies, and educational and training projects.
The city of Rusk applied for a grant to fund a full-time abatement officer. This year's award was in the amount of $20,000. The second and third year amounts, $10,000 and $5,000 respectively, are contingent upon funding availability.
The funding provided by the grant will have a positive impact on the city.
"We have a real problem with illegal dump sites in the city and our current staff just can't get to them all," said City Manager Amanda Hill. "This is going to be huge in cleaning up the blight and making things more appealing for our citizens and visitors alike."
The dumping problems have been costing the city an unquantified amount of money.
"Thank goodness, we haven't had one that was big enough to call in an outside crew, but it does include dump fees. If it's big enough material, then we have to take it to the dump," Hill said. "It pulls my [public works crew] from other jobs that they could be working on."
The funds provided through the grant will help with the overall cost of $102,000 for the position, including pay, benefits, additional expenses for software and a computer and the purchase of a vehicle. The abatement officer will work closely with the Building and Code Enforcement Officer Brandon Scarborough. Hill said the new officer would begin by addressing a couple of regular sites that have been problem areas for the city.
The first review of applications is Jan. 28.
"If we have a qualified applicant in that pool, we're looking at mid-February (to have someone in place)," Hill said. "I'm hoping for mid- to late February."
Once the position is no longer supported by the grant, the abatement officer becomes a full-time city employee, with no restrictions as to the work they can perform.
"I can make them a full-on code enforcement officer," Hill said. "Then I have two code officers that help more with building violations, all code-related violations."
