CENTRE — One of the quickest methods Cherokee County Administrator Tim Burgess has for determining how the economy is doing is to check the trash.

Since it opened in 1998, the Three Corners landfill has supplied hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly income for the county government. But with unemployment hovering around 10 percent nationwide – and even higher in Alabama – folks are cutting corners. And that's taken a toll on the monthly till at Three Corners.

“January was the worst month we've had since the landfill opened,” Burgess told The Post. “Obviously, it's going to decrease our budget dramatically.”

Burgess said he received word last summer from Waste Management (WM), which owns and operates Three Corners, that the company's Birmingham transfer station was about to close. With the amount of garbage headed for Cherokee County expected to drop by half, Burgess had to take out his scalpel and pare down the budget for Fiscal Year 2010.

“Instead of getting roughly $300,000-plus every year, we're probably going to get $150,000 or less this year,” Burgess said.

The county's contract with WM pays a six percent royalty on all trash sent to the landfill in southwest Cherokee County. The income is then split, with a third going to courthouse renovations, the county Highway Department, and the Board of Education.

Burgess said one of the first calls he made after learning of the coming shortfall was to the school system.

“I'm sure they've got projects and some things they were doing with the money that they're not going to get now,” Burgess said.

Burgess said the Highway Department, which relies heavily on the General Fund, had also come to depend on its share of landfill royalties.

“That is a department in our county that runs close to the line anyway, in terms of spending,” Burgess said. “The reduction of the third they are getting from the landfill really hurts.”

Burgess said a decade's worth of royalties has helped pay for the new Administrative Building and, more recently, renovations inside the Courthouse.

“We took the plaster down in the courtroom and put up sheet rock, installed new carpet and hung a new ceiling,” Burgess said.

Burgess said both WM and the county have gotten past their first impressions of each other. In the mid-2000's, state and federal investigations uncovered criminal acts related to the renegotiation of the original royalties contract that led to federal convictions for a WM representative and the former Cherokee County probate judge.

“I think that both the county and Waste Management were embarrassed by that,” Burgess said. “We all realize it has been a black eye, politically, so they were willing to work with us to help overcome it.”

Burgess said WM supplies county students with $3,000 in scholarship money every year.

“They give a $500 to each of our schools,” Burgess said. “It's a way to reach out to the community, on top of the royalties they are paying.”

A reading of the minutes from Commission meetings in the mid-1990s reveals that many residents were worried about the landfill. A decade later, Burgess said he is happy to report that most concerns were unwarranted.

“It's a pretty clean place, the landfill, and it's environmentally sound,” Burgess said. “I have never received a complaint about the smell. We have had some complaints about roads being in need of repair and some trash on the roads, but Waste Management has been good about helping out with that.”

These days, Burgess said his most pressing concern regarding Three Corners is the search for more garbage to haul into it.

“Hopefully we can work with Waste Management to go out and get some more contracts and increase the landfill's coverage area in the future,” Burgess said. “Can you believe that I'm saying we need more trash?”