Fiscal Court is pursuing a countywide franchise agreement for trash pickup services, giving Solid Waste Coordinator Debbie Nelson its rubber stamp to proceed full-steam-ahead at Tuesday's court meeting.

Nelson said the city of Russellville would not be involved with the effort because it would not generate enough fees to pay the city what it is used to getting on its own. The county seat currently receives 10 percent for residential and 5 percent for commercial pickup from Waste Management.

The reason for the fees is to generate monies that will go toward fixing the city's streets caused by trash truck usage and also to pay administrative costs accrued from the city billing for the service. Russellville has decided to bid out its service to see if it can get a better deal.

Nelson told Fiscal Court that the three other cities, Adairville, Auburn and Lewisburg, are very interested in joining the county in its attempts at lowering customer cost for the service. She said she needed to get with the cities and find out exactly what they are wanting with the deal.

According to Nelson, there are currently 1,600 households in the county that are not taking the service out of 10,000 households. Questions arose about what these households are doing with their trash. Nelson said that she is sure some are utilizing other people's trash containers, which is against the law. This would be considered theft of services, said Nelson. She said others are probably using the free dumping day at the landfill, while others may be burning their garbage or disposing of it illegally.

Nelson told the court she feels one of the first things that would need to be done is for the court to include a fee in the specs to allow for each city to receive monies for its streets and administrative costs. The three cities currently receive nothing. Nelson said these cities do not generate much revenue and should receive something to help them repair their streets.

Judge/Executive John Guion suggested a 5 percent fee, but nothing was voted on at this time. Guion did say he felt this effort was a positive step all around.

Nelson suggested the county bid out the service as both mandatory and non-mandatory to see which rate comes back better. The county is currently non-mandatory for its trash pickup but, according to Nelson, customers would probably get an even better rate if it were mandatory and then everybody could afford the service. She said by the county not being mandatory it causes people to burn their trash or dispose of it illegally.

Fiscal Court unanimously agreed to have Nelson contact the three cities and work out the details of what they want.