Recycle center to add a full-time position

Tim Nelson, county planning director, came before the Cook County board of commissioners on November 26 with a request to add a full-time recycling assistant position to the current staff.

Nelson cited the explosion in the growth of recyclable materials handled by the center as the main reason to add another employee.

He also provided a brief history of the operation.

In 1988, operating with a crew of three permanent employees, the center handled 288 tons of materials annually.

The staff was increased to four in the early 1990s when the volume grew to slightly over 500 tons, and since then, the materials brought in have grown yearly to more than 1,100 tons.

“We were able to take advantage of the sentence-to-serve crews for several years,” said Nelson, “which provided valuable assistance, but that has no longer been an option for us.”

Instead, Nelson said, the county has been hiring temporary employees to fill the gaps. Still, with the projected amount of recyclable material to be processed only increasing each year, “it is time to consider the increase of one more permanent staff member.”

As far as budgeting for a new employee, Nelson learned after working with the Auditor’s Office, “We found that it was actually more cost-effective to hire a permanent full-time position than it has been for us to hire back-to-back seasonal, temporary workers to cover the full year.”

Cook County’s recycling program is funded several ways through a Minnesota state grant, the sale of recovered recyclable materials, and through the general tax revenues.

An additional full-time employee should help the center process more recyclable materials, which should increase the amount of revenue derived from sales of those materials.

Plus, another employee should provide better service and faster processing of materials and allow for fewer closures of the budget shop due to staff shortages, Nelson said.

After a brief discussion commissioners voted unanimously to authorize adding a recycling assistant position to start Monday, January 6, 2020.