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New yard waste rules to start March 1
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Richmond Hill will officially stop accepting yard waste for pickup if it is put in plastic bags beginning March 1 following a unanimous City Council vote Tuesday night to require the debris be put in paper bags.

The move is considered both environmentally and economically sound, and the council decided to make the switch after asking City Manager Chris Lovell to make sure residents are informed and businesses have the bags available.

“Obviously there’s going to be some lag time when we continue to pick it up in plastic until it catches on,” Lovell told the council. “We’d like to make it effective March 1 and then give it a 30-day lag time and let residents know we’ll continue to pick it up as we do today. Then after April 1, that’s it — we’re not picking it up in plastic any more.”

It’s unclear how much money the city expects to save, but Lovell said earlier that providing the service currently costs Richmond Hill about $80,000 annually. The city picks up and hauls more than 1,000 tons of the dry trash a year. But it’s getting increasingly difficult to find landfills willing to accept the debris in plastic bags because they aren’t biodegradable, officials have said.

Paper bags, on the other hand, break down and can be composted along with the yard waste.

The bags usually cost about 50-cents each and can be bought at major retailers such as WalMart, Lowes and Home Depot.

Making sure they’re also available locally is important, council members said.

Council member Jon Fesperman even suggested they ask local convenience stores to carry a supply, “so residents can stop at Parkers or other convenience stores if other places are closed.”

Similarly, council member Johnny Murphy wanted to make sure supplies were on hand before the city began enforcing the measure.

“We need to make sure (local businesses) have the inventory simultaneous to us putting a date on this,” Murphy said. “Or I’ll probably be the first one to get a call from someone saying, ‘I’ve got to put this in a paper bag and nobody in Richmond Hill sells the bags.’”

As for getting word out, the city will put the new requirement on its website and on the newsletter it mails to those who get city services, such as water and sewer.

Council member Jan Bass also suggested informing homeowner’s associations along with the chamber of commerce.

But it’s also important to explain why the city is moving ahead with the requirement for paper, council member Russ Carpenter said.

“We need to clarify in the newsletter as to why we’re doing this so people will understand it’s not just an environmental thing, it’s also an expense thing,” Carpenter said. “We are finding it very difficult for anybody to take the dry trash in plastic bags. ‘Why’ is the key that will cause better buy-in from residents.”

As the board discussed the measure, Mayor Harold Fowler noted city residents recycled about 660 tons of trash last year.

“If you convert that to pounds, it sounds a little more impressive,” Lovell said, which led to various attempts by council members to do the math before the city manager came up with a number — 1.32 million pounds.

“That’s a lot taken out of our landfill, and that is fantastic. (Richmond Hill) citizens deserve applause over that,” Fowler said.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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