Trash pick-ups still dragging in West Memphis

Trash pick-ups still dragging in West Memphis

Collections more than a week behind as crews struggle with plague of problems

news@theeveningtimes.com

A perfect storm has downed the West Memphis Sanitation Department.

City crews have struggled to keep up with customers expectations for regular weekly pick up.

“We are nine and a half days behind,” said City Engineer Amanda Hicks after the last city council meeting.

The sanitation department endured low staffing, from lost time injuries, terminations, not having enough drivers. Mechanical breakdowns, including those related to property damage accidents and employee sabotage, hobbled the fleet. Residents began noticing slow pick up when branches from spring pruning began stacking up and sitting along city streets for more than two weeks.

The city reached an agreement with Rubicon to improve efficiency in trash collection and to digitally gather vehicle maintenance data to help keep the fleet running.

City customer Gene Lashlee listened to Rubicon representatives update city council and compared some findings to the city of Atlanta which also utilizes the Smart City app. West Memphis is doing a free six month test piloting period with Rubicon. Should the city continue, the program will cost tens of thousands per year to continue.

Lashlee told city council none of that expense was necessary. He thanked city council for the noticeable improvement in the number of junk cars in the city and then asked for answers about the continued long wait time for trash pick up.

“I do not know what happened at the beginning of this year,” said Lashlee. “For years my yard trash got picked up every Monday. In the spring that all that changed. It got to the point I did not know when to put my trash out. I’ve read about a lot of reasons for that in the paper, the overtime issues, the truck issues, the employee issues and I think I and the citizens of West Memphis have been pretty patient for seven months since all this started. Until recently, I have not seen much of an improvement.”

Lashlee thought the Rubicon program was a bit of overkill. Since the problems were new, he thought that the city trash pick up could be better equipped and managed as it had been in the past.

“We’re not Atlanta. We don’t have to have that kind of program to travel over our streets to pick up our garbage,” said Lashlee.

“I’m concerned all that money will be spent to have all that information in a computer file here somewhere and doesn’t help anything because we don’t have equipment, we don’t have employees, and we have breakdowns.”

Lashlee appreciated that the service delays had become a tough nut to crack, but wanted a remedy for the unpredictable trash pick collection.

“My Daddy always said the questions are easy the answers are hard,” said Lashlee. “I know you all are charged with the answers.

I am hoping someone

can tell me and the citizens of West Memphis within a short period of time, when I’ll be able to put my garbage on the street for Monday pick-up.

“If this is a step to get citizens used to every two week or three week trash pick up, it is not going to work. Give us assurances that this will be taken care of.”

Sometimes city council asks citizens speaking for clarification, but Lashlee’s expectations were evidently clear. In the end, no elected official responded in anyway to Lashlee’s request for assurances.

By John Rech