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Interim DPW commissioner presents FY25 Q3 report; council presses for staffing and budget detail
Summary
Interim Commissioner Keturah Garmon presented Department of Public Works Q3 results, highlighting high curbside completion rates, increased yard-trimming stops, fleet repairs and vehicle purchases, and staffing and budget questions from council members about vacancy funding and fleet overage risk.
Keturah Garmon, interim commissioner for the Department of Public Works, presented the department’s FY2025 third-quarter (January–March) report to the City Utilities Committee, and council members pressed for additional staffing and budget detail.
Garmon told the committee curbside garbage crews recorded about 1,300,000 stops during the quarter; roughly 5% of stops had issues reported, with “not out” (residents not setting carts for collection) the most common exception and about 66,000 instances cited. DPW reported a 99.5% success rate for curbside garbage collection. Recycling crews handled about 1.2 million stops; yard-trimming stops were about 1.4 million with roughly 22% of those stops reporting issues. Special operations completed 88% of multifamily collections (2,600 completions out of 3,000 cases) and noted blocked access and locked gates as common impediments.
On fleet, DPW reported 4,600 in-house repairs and 595 outsourced commercial repairs (5,220 total) and received 247 vehicles and pieces of equipment totaling nearly $9,000,000. Fleet in‑house labor logged over 29,000 wrench-time hours; Atlanta Police Department vehicles accounted for 27% of those hours and DPW vehicles 25%.
Staffing and budget details drew specific council scrutiny. Garmon said DPW has 758 positions total, with 638 filled and 120 vacant; she described a more detailed breakdown given to the committee showing 181 approved essential positions that are not funded and 475 field positions that are allocated and funded. Council members asked for the written breakdown because the slide totals did not reconcile easily during the hearing. On finance, Garmon said DPW’s budget is $102,000,000 and projections show $87,000,000 spent to date (about 85% of budget). She and council members discussed fleet services’ near‑full-year spending (reported at 99% of its allocation) and a department estimate that fleet could run a $9–10 million overage tied to increased maintenance work, pay-study adjustments and better capture of mechanics’ labor through an upgraded system.
Council members and staff also highlighted community-facing initiatives and volunteer activity: Keep Atlanta Beautiful organized 55 community cleanups mobilizing 700 volunteers who contributed over 1,400 hours and collected 23 tons of trash; DPW reported 1,325 miles of right-of-way maintained and 1,300+ tons of litter collected by street sweepers during the quarter.
Council members requested that DPW provide a reconciled personnel paper and the more granular vacancy/funding breakdown ahead of upcoming budget deliberations; Chief Operating Officer Chandra Burke said a revised personnel paper would be provided to the council a few days before the next meeting.
