Fentress Making 4 Solid Waste Workers Full-Time

The Fentress County Commission moving forward with four new full-time attendant positions at four county convenience centers.

Solid Waste Director Michael Rick said they would be doing additional work for the department such as litter pickup and sorting recyclable materials out of the waste at the transfer station. Rick said the solid waste department currently struggles with staffing.

“If someone calls out sick or is on vacation, we have to pull from litter pickup to cover that position,” Rick said. “We don’t have anywhere else that we can pull from, and this would allow us to be able to have extra people to help fill those positions.”

Rick said he spoke with Finance Director Tyler Arms and determined that hiring two full-time workers would cost more than promoting the four part-time employees they already have. The new full-time workers will increase the county’s solid waste expenses by $67,386.66.

The extra hours will also allow the county to start a new effort selling sheetrock to a company called Rockwood Sustainable Solutions in Lebanon.
Rick said the exact details of the sheet rock deal are still being worked out, but he said he knows that the company will buy from them.

“We’re in the works of discussing that, as far as like the logistics of it, whether it will be contract or not,” Rick said. “There’s still a lot of questions there to get definite answers.”

Commissioner Benny Hughes asked if the market for sheet rock would stay profitable into the future because the county invested in equipment to recycle glass in the past and currently there is no market to sell it.

Rick said that happened because their machinery does not crush the glass fine enough to sell in the current market, but that problem will not happen with sheet rock.

“They crush it down, separate the gypsum out of it, and then they sell the gypsum,” Rick said. “So there’s a very large market for that.”