Haddonfield Leaf Collection Behind Schedule

The leaves are piling up on Haddonfield streets. A perfect storm, or imperfect as it were, of budget cuts, rain and a late leaf fall has combined to leave this tree-lined suburb literally knee-deep in leaves.

"We're trying a new method with less people this year and it's really not working as well as we hoped it would work," borough Administrator Sharon McCullough said. "It was a major service that had to get cut back due to the budget constraints that we had."

Haddonfield had hired additional part-time workers to augment borough employees to collect leaves in previous years. But a state-imposed, two-percent budget increase cap lead to cutbacks in collection for this town with nearly 10,000 trees within its 2.8-mile public right of ways. That tree count doesn't include trees on private property.

McCullough said leaf collection is about 10 days behind schedule, but now has seven trucks collecting leaves instead of five. She said the borough is still racing to complete collects by the original target date of Dec. 9.

McCollough said adding more crews has put leaf collection $6,000 over its allotted budget. She plans to find the money in other departments without additional service cuts.

McCullough said the borough will start posting updated leaf collection schedules on the borough website: haddonfieldnj.org.