WM Sanitation Department in need of cleanup

WM Sanitation Department in need of cleanup

Employee issues causing problems citywide

By John Rech

news@theeveningtimes.com

The next Mayor of West Memphis will inherit an operations mess to clean up in the sanitation department. City residents have been stacking tree limbs and other trash by the roadside since springtime only to watch debris pile up for as long as three weeks.

Meanwhile at the city shop cross training sanitation workers to help with trash has proven impossible because of shop rules and established practices favoring senior drivers with insatiable overtime pay appetites. Two trucks were sabotaged during the summer to further aggravate the slow trash service and a worker dismissed.

City Council representative wanted to know when the sanitation department would begin to put the needs of the city first.

The issue may become a hot button for frustrated voters with trash in an election where blight along with crime rose to the top of citizen concerns.

City Treasurer Frank Martin noticed a high rate of lost time injuries among the drivers and offered changes in safety training and injury rehabilitation to curb the runaway expenses at the sanitation department. The treasurer said the department needed to take money to meet payroll.

The Public Works Commission heard the news as it began 2019 budgeting considerations for the sanitation department during its November meeting. City Council representatives including Ward 3 alderman- elect Charles Wheeless heard that spending out paced the rate increase from just two years ago.

Overtime, injuries and roadblocks in cross training job functions presented huge hurdles.

Treasurer Frank Marion said the poor safety performance and high injury experience in the sanitation department drove spending on workers compensation per person to the most expensive in the city government. Data from the Rubicon pointed out that staffing in garbage collection was double the need while the city remained behind on trash collecting.

Martin stated payroll and safety control fixes needed to get in place to begin thinking about sanitation expediters for next year.

West Memphis charges $ 15/month for garbage and trash, two dollars more than Marion but can’t make payroll. The commission asked for a rate comparison from similar sized cities across the state to gage if the garbage rates were about right or too low.

The city treasurer said the sanitation department can’t make payroll.

“We have to transfer funds from the depreciation schedule to make payroll for it to work,” said Martin. “The sanitation department was already in a $500,000 hole having borrowed from the city general fund and tapping into Utility department coffers to pay its expenses.

Its rate structure simply did not pay for expenses.

“The general fund and utility fund is owed almost half a million dollars from sanitation,” reported Martin. “At this point I don’t even see a way for them to start into a repayment fund. Pure and simple we had to loan them $174,000, The utility fund is when the collect on the utility bills for sanitation fees and that fund is steadily growing to half million by the end of the year. ”

Martin also reported workers comp claims from drivers was excessive and safety performance, accountability on the management side needed to improve while he put in place a more cost effective workers rehabilitation program.

“Our per capita workers comp is the highest,” said Martin. “It’s not the rear loaders with the issues, its the front loaders and the trash trucks -the drivers on workers comp. How can you have drivers getting hurt and out on workers comp; three of them?”

Different drivers went down with an arm injury, another to a leg, and a third with a torn rotator cuff.

One happened at the landfill when he pulled a lever on a 20 year old trash

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