Could change in Raleigh leaf collection fall on residents' wallets?

The city works to collect leaves between November and February, typically by having residents rake them to the curb before having a machine suck them up, but leaders say the volume of leaves has become excessive.

"As of February 13, we collected 3,100 loads. Which equates to about 68.000 yards of cubic material which a football field 40 feet deep," said one person during Monday's city council meeting.

With 250 complaints, and 50 to 60 phone calls a day about collection delays, the Raleigh City Council wants to find a solution.

"It's a safety issue and it's an environmental issue and if we're not getting them out of the street, we're not really solving the entire problem," said Stef Mendell, a city council member.

During Monday's city council meeting, a couple of options were discussed, including having residents put leaves in bags. But residents say this isn't fair for those who have trouble with the physicality of the task.

"There are a lot of elderly folks, myself included, who would have trouble pushing tons of leaves," said Jay Joiner. "They were talking about putting them in bags. I did once and it was like 40 bags."

Another idea was to make improvements to the current leaf collecting schedule, switching yard waste crews to the leaf collection, or even charging an additional fee.

"To do a flat out fee increase, that hits everybody in the pocket for something they're not using," said Corey Branch, a city council member.

Residents aren't thrilled with the options, but say a more accurate pick-up schedule would be a good start.

"Knowing the schedule we could sweep them to the streets. Unfortunately, their pick up schedule is lousy," said Joiner.

With the amounts of rain and snow that impacted the area this winter, the crews are still running behind.

The council left the topic up for more discussion with no decision being made yet.