Board calls for review of county leaf pickups
Among the resolutions approved by the Board of Supervisors last week, one addresses leaf collections, and another deals with the need for apartments to have pet-friendly policies.
Mason District residents were told to put their leaves on the curb in early November but in some cases, the leaves weren’t picked up until a month later, said Mason Supervisor Andres Jimenez.
“This creates a number of challenges, primarily around safety in neighborhoods where there are no sidewalks,” Jimenez said.
Residents put their leaves on the curb expecting them to be vacuumed up on a certain day. When that doesn’t happen, the wind blows the leaves back on their yard.
“Many of our residents who are seniors often pay for a company to blow their leaves to the road for collection and, given the delay, some have had to pay for this service multiple times,” Jimenez said.
The Department of Public Works and Environmental Services “made tremendous progress with the amount of leaves collected” – a total of 4,761 tons equating to 2,030 truckloads, he noted. And while DPWES has improved information sharing with residents, “there are areas in which we could improve.”
The resolution calls for DPWES to develop a communication and implementation plan for the 2025-26 leaf collection program. That would include a public information session at the Mason Government Center for staff to present the after-action report for the 2024-25 season and a review of changes being implemented for the next leaf season.
Jimenez also requests a virtual meeting be scheduled for all county residents who receive leaf collection service from DPWES.
Related story: Jimenez works to retain leaf vacuuming
The BoS also passed a motion proposed by Supervisor Rodney Lusk (Franconia) that encourages multifamily communities to have pet-friendly policies.
The resolution directs the county executive to convene an informational roundtable for the Apartment and Office Building Owners Association, the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority, and leading affordable and market-rate landlords “to learn from our animal shelter professionals about the benefits of pet-friendly housing policies.”
“Pet ownership can be a real enhancement to the quality of life,” Lusk said. “For many, the comfort and companionship pets provide is irreplaceable.”
Pet-friendly housing is hard to find, however, as many apartments charge an additional fee and a monthly rent for pets or ban them outright. As a result, many renters have to give up their pets. The scarcity of affordable housing with reasonable pet policies is particularly burdensome for lower-income pet owners.
22 responses to “Board calls for review of county leaf pickups”
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Andres Jimenez should investigate himself. There should be a one sentence explanation given by his office describing why the delay happened. Then there should be three to five bullets about what he’s going to change so this doesn’t happen again. We don’t need a taxpayer funded investigation with communication and implementation plans. Suck up the leaves on time and write a contract that stops payment if not done on time. Not difficult. Use common sense.
Jimenez earning every penny of the BoS self appointed raise… so far the bingo card has useless arts projects, raking leaves, and a committee. No hope of getting code enforcement in residential neighborhoods or funding for law enforcement. Sigh.
You left out the motion to encourage owners of multi-family communities to allow pets. Crime, illegal boarding houses, slumlords, homeless people wandering all over the place, traffic – but the BoS decides to focus and cats and dogs. If people can’t afford to house, feed, and clothe themselves, pets are probably not the answer.
Back in the 70s, there’d be a month or so that me and my brothers would rake and bag leaves for the older folks in the neighborhood for a few bucks. Then shovel driveways in the winter. Even though there were 9 of us living in a little house and we were pretty darn poor, it rarely felt that way. Just about every family in that hood was like us. Is leaf collection and snow clearing controversy just a symptom of broken communities?
Strawman. No, you lived in a small house with a small yard. We are largely talking about massive yards that take professional crews days to clear with gas powered commercial blowers. If you were to “rake and bag leaves” in my neighborhood, you’d be doing it for weeks and maybe months.
They still have not collected our leaves the second time in parts of Mason District. The BoS will surely “study” this and absolve themselves of responsibility by making us all responsible for leaf pickup.
This is what the County reports say:
“The Solid Waste Management Program will be developing a new 20-year Solid Waste Management Plan for Fairfax County as required by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The plan is required to show long-range planning for all waste including system capacity. The County’s Community Wide Energy and Climate Action Plan has prescribed a goal for Fairfax County to divert 90 percent of all waste from landfill and waste to energy by 2040. The new 20-year plan will meet regulatory requirements and include a road map to zero waste by 2040 by establishing a menu of available technologies, strategies, and system improvements with their associated costs. It is anticipated that funding needs will increase significantly as zero waste programs are implemented.”
“The current service model also conflicts with the Board of Supervisors’ environmental directives to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and move towards zero waste outcomes. Carbon is expended to
move leaves to the curb, to collect leaves, to transport leaves to the processing facility [Leaves and grass are transported to a compost facility for processing in Prince William County], and to transport the compost back into the landscape from which it was generated. On-site composting of
leaves is a more sustainable model for managing leaves.”
“SWMP remains concerned about its ability to guarantee timely service due to unpredictable leaf drop timing. Because of prioritizing public safety and vacuum leaf service conflicts with Board of Supervisor sustainability goals, SWMP developed a proposal to discontinue Vacuum Leaf Service after the FY 2024 season. Upon reviewing the result of the public opinion survey, SWMP staff are postponing the proposal to discontinue vacuum leaf service after the FY 2024 season. Although the rationale for discontinuing the service permanently persists, the strong negative reaction of current customers indicates that additional outreach to educate customers is needed as is more time for customers to identify alternative leaf management methods.”
“The FY 2023 rate was $0.012 per $100 assessment value. The FY 2025 levy of $0.019 per $100 of assessed real estate value represents an increase from the FY 2024 rate of $0.012 per $100 of assessed real estate value. A preliminary rate of $0.024 per $100 of assessed real estate value is estimated for FY 2026.”
I will never understand why my leaves are calculated to be more or less valuable than the leaves of my other neighbors. This service SHOULD NOT be a tax, but a flat fee for service across the board for all properties within a Vacuum Leaf Collection district.
My “study” reveals their Plan is to:
1) Teach Us A Lesson, 2) while increasing the tax for Vacuum Leaf Collection, and 3) all the while achieve Zero Waste by 2040.
Got it?
You’re supposed to know that studies are/were completed. That way, you know not to question the conclusion.
You’re not supposed to read the studies, now you’ve ruined the whole process.
“Many of our residents who are seniors often pay for a company to blow their leaves to the road for collection and, given the delay, some have had to pay for this service multiple times.”
Does this mean these residents previously anticipated blowing their leaves only one time per season? In my community, this contracted service is paid for and delivered in three installments, to correspond to the number of county pickups.
“Residents put their leaves on the curb expecting them to be vacuumed up on a certain day. When that doesn’t happen, the wind blows the leaves back on their yard.”
Where is this happening? I have experienced very little leaf blow-back into my yard, and I’ve lived in several Fairfax County-provided leaf vacuum neighborhoods for several decades. Whatever leaf blowing I see only moves the leaves further into the street.
Jimenez also requests a virtual meeting be scheduled for all county residents who receive leaf collection service from DPWES.
For what purpose? To make us all feel better? DPWES is on the record (from July 2023), recommending the leaf collection program be terminated.
yeah, of course they didn’t blow back into your yard. Instead they blew into mine and other homes that live at the bottom of hills. 2 weeks ago, I had to rake up a pile of leaves that were 1 1/2 feet deep because they had blown from elsewhere. I don’t even have all that many trees but I sure have leaves from everyone else’s yard that raked them on time.
Suggestion: rake your leaves into a furrow run,over it three times with your lawn mower, then rake the mulched leaves around your bushes. For me it’s less work than hauling to the curb, and much better than looking at a huge pile of leaves taking up a parking place for a month plus. I’ve gotten so I rake my neighbors street pile into my own yard to mulch it up. Brown and orange gold!
What is the point of having leaf pick up for a small fraction of the county anyway? Those of us without it seem to get by just fine. Year after year I just mow all of mine and it doesn’t cost me or the county any extra money or headache.
This service was inaugurated after federal air quality legislation effectively prohibited the burning of leaves. This program isn’t supposed to cost the county anything. It’s supposed to be funded through a surcharge to the property taxes of Mason District residents. This process was handled efficiently until the last couple of seasons. Although the surcharge was recently increased, service has continued to deteriorate. Last season, the collection schedule didn’t anticipate the fact that trees began dropping their leaves earlier than usual. I don’t know what happened this season. So far, our leaves have only been collected once and that was in November.
I believe the County has previously indicated this annual leaf collection action is based on offering up a short-term contract with nn days between actually conducting collection work. Add in the necessary personnel/equipment requirements and that combo apparently doesn’t attract much potential interest.
The BoS has wanted to get rid of leaf collection for quite a while. I think that by not providing the service or providing it poorly they can rationalize it away and gain support to have it removed.
In addition, after the County not picking up trash for some three weeks it would not surprise me if they want to divest trash pick up as well, and have residents pay private companies (but still keeping the taxes paid)
You haven’t been paying enough attention.
https://annandaletoday.com/fairfax-county-plans-to-overhaul-trash-collection-system/
TL;DR; For trash pickup, the county wants to expand it’s responsibility by having one unified sanitation district for the entire county (every residence), responsible for the management of contracts with private haulers. It’s gonna be 63 new county employees to manage this.
I’m giving up on this program. After having uncollected leaves blown back into my yard for several years, the sensible course of action is to deal with the issue myself. – Sparky
Yes, I’m sick of the BS from the BoS! We were told originally (they keep changing the dates on the website because they are so late!) that our leaves would be picked up in late November — guess what? they are still there. We have deep gutters so the leaves (under the snow) are still in the middle of the street. It’s unconscionable! Fairfax collects money from us for our trash and leaf pickup — which they don’t do. The special pickups (which I pay for three per year and generally do not use) have been out in the street for weeks! The last several years have been a disaster. I don’t know what happened — maybe they cut back on the crews since they needed the extra cash for their big salary increases — but it was much better a few years back. They used to pick up the leaves the week or the day they said they would be here! THERE IS NO EXCUSE!
I started burning my leaves this year. Also started burning firewood in my fireplace to cut down on exorbitant energy costs from central heating.
This is exactly what happens when government turns stupid; and then its constituents feel validated to be more stupid.
And there you have it, a much more critical environmental problem than we have with vacuuming up leaves. Burning leaves is both a dangerous hazard for the local environmental health regarding people’s ability to breath, particularly those who have asthma; and these burns can also ignite brushfires that seem to be on the uptick locally and nationwide!
Leave it to Chris Herrington (the new guy in charge of this program) to wreck a program that has worked flawlessly for decades, and at times while running a significant surplus. This disrupted our neighborhood for months and made navigating the streets unsafe (especially for kids) since traffic was down to one lane bc of the piles.
You can be behind schedule, but failure to communicate being a month late on pickup number one is raw incompetence. Fire yourselves.
Due to my angst, disgust, and seeing through the excuses, I saved all the e-mails, downloaded all the schedules, photographed the actual work efforts, made notes of the dates and times of service, filed online complaint from the webpage, and wrote to the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Mason District Supervisor, the head of DPWES, and department management. I received a canned response from the online complaint. I received a personal e-mail back from Chairman McKay, and from Supervisor Jimenez. I heard NOTHING from the head of DPWES or his second in command.
First date for Round 1 in my Area 4 was November 6, 2024. They finally came and vacuumed a small section of my street on November 29. By this date, it had rained 5 times between November 10 – 28. Nearest the original date, the leaf piles were light, fluffy, and completely dry, as the last date of rain was a month earlier on October 1. Remember, we were in a severe drought and had danger warnings and alerts. If someone had sparked a fire, our neighborhood would have gone up in smoke!
The crew who did this little section of my street on November 29 consisted of 8 people on the ground, 1 driver, multiple dump trucks, a passenger van (presumably for humane breaks), and a County pickup truck (presumably a supervisor monitor). They worked on the opposite side of my street at 9:30am, and returned on my side of the street at 1:20pm. My street is less than 1/2 mile in length, not including the 8 cul-de-sacs (which I do not believe they vacuumed in this pass). Truth of the matter and despite what DPWES was using as an excuse for the methodology being employed, THERE WERE “idling trucks” backed up along the street waiting to take leaves to the dump.
First date for Round 2 in my Area 4 was posted multiple occasions as mid-December; but was pushed back 2 times. They finally came and vacuumed my street on January 3, 2025; even though there was a brief snow squall that morning. This vacuum event was done by 1 truck with an automatic leaf vacuum tube; there was 1 driver and 0 people on the ground.
Other streets in my neighborhood STILL REMAIN INCOMPLETE for Round 2. From the outset of the street-by-street schedule being implemented on the webpage, those streets were always listed as incomplete. However, winter snows fell on January 5, 6, 10, 11, 19, plus a few dustings in-between. Those streets continue to be listed as “In Progress”, even though THERE IS NO PROGRESS — only e-mails speculating when leaf collection will resume.
My neighborhood has curbs and gutters, but no sidewalks, some streets are more narrow than others, some streets are winding or hilly, there are numerous cul-de-sacs. There are many people who walk themselves, babies, dogs, or bike. The Elementary School is directly accessible from the neighborhood, so many younger children walk. Other age children walk coming and going from school bus drop-off points. And of course, there are the ever-increasing number of delivery vehicles zooming thru numerous times day and night – Uber Eats, Door Dash, USPS, FedEx, UPS, Amazon, DHL, South Mountain Creamery, Giant, Uber, etc.
Yesterday, I witnessed a Fire Truck briskly traveling around a curve on my street heading into a blind spot. There was a car parked along the other side of the street. A car was approaching the Fire Truck from the opposite direction near where the car was parked on that side of the road. The Fire Truck was able to flash lights, stop in time to not have a head-on collision with the approaching car. The car had to back up and idle along the curb in order to provide enough room for the Fire Truck to continue on its mission. 1 to 2 seconds later, perhaps the outcome would have been dangerously different.
Snow and ice remain all along both sides of the street, because it has never been cleared curb-to-curb; even though the VDOT Contractor put down enough salt to put Morton out of business and the Chesapeake Bay at very high-risk. The birth of travel lane has increased as some melting has occurred. But with vehicles that elect to park parallel on both sides of the street instead of their driveways, it naturally narrows the 2 travel lanes to 1. The cul-de-sacs are filled with head-in parking, where there is extremely limited turning radius, and little space for leaves, snow piles, or access for emergency services. These are all accidents waiting to happen!
Vacuum Leaf Collection that should have been done in mid-December, and WAS NOT, has added to the safety issues in our neighborhood.
Christmas Tree pick-ups have also been affected, with 2 weeks of collection being pushed back due to weather. Our normal collection day is Thursday. Trees were on the curb but NOT picked up on Thursday, January 9 or 16. The last day for tree pick-up was Wednesday, January 22. So, our neighborhood received NO tree pick-up. A neighbor called on January 21 to inquire and was told to schedule a Special Bulk Pick-Up. Of course, those are also behind and trees are bound up in mounds of snow.
The white-collar guys at DPWES sitting in their ivory tower scramble to send out bi-weekly e-mails of apology asking for our continued patience. The cutesy messages with goofy statistics DO NOT make up for the poor execution of the Vacuum Leaf Collection “service”. The IT department is clearly working overtime to keep up with programming and constant updates to the webpage. None of this has resulted in the leaves being collected. It is the unfortunate souls, who will be tasked with scraping up this decomposing, gooey leaf mess, that are our blue-collar Heroes!
It is no one at the County-level who is at fault that it snowed multiple times in January, or that the temperatures have been so low that little of this icy snow has melted. IT IS their fault, though, for doing such a terrible job of managing, anticipating, and flexing the tasks necessary to get the job done in a timely manner. It is their job — after all, we have already paid for it!
It does not take a management degree to see that Round 3 will not happen until March.
On the very best of days, in the best of weather, we must be aware and vigilant to ensure safe passage in our neighborhood. Safety should be first and foremost in the management objectives of the County and its services.
“Houston, we have a problem” and it came from Austin, TX.