DUANE SHERRILLEditor

With Mount Brushmore expanding every day posing a fire risk, the Tullahoma Board of Mayor and Aldermen agreed to hire a mulch company to assault the city’s enormous brush and debris pile.

Benchmark Mulch Company in Christiana entered the winning bid of $85,000 for brush grinding and debris removal for the city and will be tasked to take down the mountain of brush.

“I don’t know if most people understand the volume and massive amount of brush we pick up,” City Administrator Jason Quick noted, pointing to the massive pile that is maintained by the city which is often called Mount Brushmore. “We have to bid this out annually in order to remove that brush.”

Public Works Director Butch Taylor revealed it would take a city crew three months to get rid of the debris if that did it themselves. In the past, the company that got the contract for removal would come in and grind it up and then haul it off.

“Everybody and their uncle is cutting trees down right now from all the storms we have had,” Taylor noted. “We’ve got a massive amount and we are probably full. We are at a point here if we don’t something pretty quick we will have to quit letting people dump.”

Taylor said a lot of the backlog on site was caused by five storms that happened in close proximity of each other recently that had many cleaning up the mess with the debris ending up in the city’s holding yard.

“There’s a tree service on every street,” Taylor noted, adding the Benchmark comes three times a year presently to assault Mount Brushmore.

Aldermen Kurt Glick had some questions after looking at the paperwork on the bid, namely why the city did not go with the CFC bid. Taylor pointed out there are issues to going with CFC since it would be more time and expense on the part of public works plus CFC wants to use “roll offs” which Taylor said would not work. Glick pointed out that by going with CFC the brush would be taken there and would not end up having to be held on city property.

Taylor countered by pointing to the mileage city trucks would have to drive to take the brush to CFC. He said that would add quite a bit of toll to the trucks.

Glick asked if citizens could simply drop their brush at CFC but Taylor said there would be no accountability about who is or isn’t a local citizen. “We have people from everywhere trying to slip their brush in here,” Taylor said. “You’ll get out of town contractors coming in here dumping their stuff. Senior citizens aren’t going to drive out to CFC and wait. There’s only one set of scales.”

Quick interjected that many people are used to their brush being picked up and do not have the means to transport their brush to CFC. That could lead to brushing being left in yards. He also noted that the CFC bid would mean more work for public works while the Benchmark bid would not require much work by the city.

The discussion then turned to safety issues being caused by the backlog of brush at Mount Brushmore. Quick suggested drawing a line on the property that, once reached, would require disposal before more brush could be dumped. Other members of the council suggested some extra funds could be applied to make sure the property does not get backlogged with debris.

Glick said he is not concerned about what company gets the job, but instead that it gets done for safety reasons.

“If a fire started down there, I don’t know if it’d ever get put out,” Glick said.

The board approved the measure 6-0.