County declares emergency on trash problems
Polk County commissioners took turns Tuesday morning denouncing one of the companies contracted to provide trash pickup.
Commissioner Bill Braswell raised the issue during his comment period in Tuesday’s regular meeting, excoriating Waste Management for continuing problems with garbage collection on the county’s east side.
“I'm still trying to figure out why a company that’s the largest garbage company in the world can't pick the garbage up in Polk County,” Braswell said. “I mean, personally, if this was me, I'd take a full-page ad out in the Houston Chronicle and it would say, ‘Why can't your company pick up the garbage in Polk County, Florida?’ and maybe the president and the CEO and some of those people in Houston would get a better idea of how frustrated we are here in Polk County.”
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Braswell introduced a motion to declare a state of local emergency, and the other four county commissioners joined him in voting to implement it. The order means that the county can bypass its usual bidding process in hiring third-party contractors to help fix what commissioners call persisting problems, including frequently missed collections.
Polk County signed a seven-year, $73-million contract in 2017 with Advanced Disposal, a company since acquired by Waste Management, a publicly traded firm based in Houston, Texas. Under the contract, Waste Management handles trash and recycling collection east of U.S. 17, while another company, FCC Environmental Services, covers the west side of the county.
Commissioners have fielded complaints about inconsistent collection of garbage for months. Earlier in the year, the commission focused more on problems with FCC’s service, which prompted more than 5,000 calls in a single week in February. That prompted the commission to call a state of emergency covering service on the county’s west side.
Braswell said at Tuesday’s meeting that FCC has improved its service and that missed collections have become more prevalent in the eastern county, the area covered by Waste Management. He said county officials met with representatives of both companies in early November, after which complaints about FCC’s performance declined noticeably.
Braswell said that Waste Management representatives promised to fix problems that were causing some collections to be missed altogether.
“I'm here to report, it's not fixed,” Braswell said. “And just for the people watching this, I want them to understand, you know, this has been a huge embarrassment to this board, (to County Manager) Bill Beasley. The outrage from the citizens is justified. We have not performed and we continue not to perform.”
Two representatives from Waste Management spoke during Tuesday’s meeting, responding to the criticism. Roger Crow, a district manager, said the company has been coping with a series of challenges, including a lack of trucks, maintenance problems and delayed repairs caused by the global supply-chain slowdown.
Crow said the company has recently had 13 trucks out of service and needing repairs.
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“Yes, we're the biggest garbage company in the world,” Crow said. “But that doesn't mean we can get parts any faster than anybody else. And we try, trust me. We have a whole supply-chain group that are working with the different manufacturers to get these parts, and we're stuck just like everyone else.”
Crow said that his district has added eight trucks and 18 drivers to the existing crew in recent months. He said he just requested 13 more drivers.
Bill Gresham, another Waste Management representative, said the company is coping with increased demands from Southwest Florida following Hurricane Ian. The storm destroyed 80 of the company’s trucks and displaced 25 employees, he said.
Gresham said the company is bringing additional trucks to Polk County, including one on its way from San Antonio, Texas, and another coming from farther west. But Gresham said the company has faced delays in training employees, for example, when the new truck has a steering wheel on the right side and a driver is used to a left-hand-drive vehicle.
Braswell grew impatient with the explanations from the Waste Management representatives. He gave the example of a neighborhood in Haines City that he said had gone 28 days between garbage collections.
“That’s not (lack of) trucks; that's management,” Braswell said. “That's bad management. And I don't understand how you can't see that. I mean, the truck excuse, the fuel, the cost of parts, all that works as an excuse. But four weeks in a row not picking up a development’s garbage, this is bad management.”
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Gresham said that in some cases Waste Management has brought in outside trucks only to be told they couldn’t use them because the vehicles did not have Polk County logos on them.
Ana Wood Rogers, Polk County’s director of waste and recycling, countered that her staff is unable to track the new vehicles through GPS devices and is “flying blind” in trying to monitor Waste Management’s collections.
Braswell was not the only commissioner to express frustration with Waste Management’s performance. Martha Santiago, recently reelected to a second term, said she has grown weary of hearing trash companies make promises and not deliver on them.
“I have over 100 emails just yesterday that I had to go through, and every one of them was about the garbage — (delays of) three weeks, four weeks. Trucks go by and they leave the garbage there. And all I hear is just excuses and excuses and excuses. I'm so tired of this.”
Commissioner Neil Combee said he and his colleagues were “at the end of our rope.”
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“The five of us represent the people this county, who are expecting to have their garbage picked up, and they're paying for it,” Combee said. “And we negotiated a deal, the board did, and they expect that to happen. They could not care less about your parts. They could not care less about your lack of drivers, or they could not care less about right hand versus left hand. They just want the garbage picked up.”
The emergency declaration will allow the county to speed its procurement process, making deals with other companies for assistance in trash collection, without having to go through the normal bidding process, Polk County spokesperson Mianne Nelson said after the meeting.
In other actions
♦ The commission approved a $2.3 million grant to help develop a low-income apartment complex in Winter Haven. The county agreed to a contract with the developer, South Florida-based Smith & Henzy Advisory Group, and Neighborhood Lending Partners of Florida for the use of funds received through the federal American Rescue Plan.
The money comes from a federal program intended to reduce homeless and increase housing stability.
The developer plans to renovate 42 existing units and build 42 new ones. The project is scheduled to begin construction in February and to be completed in 2024.
♦ The commission approved more than $4 million in funding for primary care, dental services and behavioral health services for low-income residents. Polk County’s Indigent Healthcare Services administers, a safety-net program, is funded by a one-half cent sales surtax.
Commissioners approved an amendment to a contract with Winter Haven Hospital to provide behavioral health services for slightly over $1 million a year.
♦ The commission voted to install George Lindsey as chair for the next year. He succeeds Santiago. Commissioners also elected Braswell as vice chair.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk County Commission calls emergency over trash pickup problems
