Wood-Rogers draws praise in retirement as longtime waste director for Polk County
Ana Wood-Rogers, who has led Polk County’s waste and recycling division for much of the past 25 years, made her final appearance before the Polk County Commission on Tuesday.
County Manager Bill Beasley lauded Wood-Rogers for being named one of five recipients of the Waste 360 Women Who Inspire Awards. With obvious reluctance, he also announced that Wood-Rogers’ service to the county would end at 5 p.m. that day with her retirement.
County Commission Chair George Lindsey, echoing Beasley, called it “a bittersweet day.”
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Ana for the last 11 years in my time on this board, and, indeed, she is the most consummate, professional team player,” Lindsey said.
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Wood-Rogers, 61, came to Polk County in 1998 to lead the waste management department and continued in that role for seven years before taking a position with the city of Jacksonville.
The county recruited Wood-Rogers back in 2012, following a period of problems and controversy under her successor. In recent years, she has coordinated with the Commission on how to address persistent missed trash collections by a contractor.
Polk County has hired Susan Peltz, a former county employee who also worked for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, as interim director of waste and recycling, spokesperson Mianne Nelson said. Peltz, an engineer, is not seeking a permanent role and will work until a replacement for Wood-Rogers is hired, Nelson said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Wood-Rogers drew plaudits from commissioners and from a guest speaker, Tim Townsend, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida.
Townsend, whose department has collaborated with Polk County waste and recycling, read a letter of recognition for Wood-Rogers. He said some students had come to wish her well.
“I've had the opportunity to work with solid waste officials and local government officials throughout the state of Florida and beyond over my career over the past few decades,” Townsend said, “and I can tell you there is none that stands out above Ana Wood in terms of her dedication, her innovation, her perseverance and then her mentorship.”
Lauded by commissioners
Following an expression of praise for Wood-Rogers from Beasley, each of the county commissioners offered an encomium.
Commissioner Neil Combee said he unsure just how long he has worked with Rogers-Wood.
“I do want to say that she is one of the few people in county government in all the years that I’ve spent that you could call her, day or night, weekday or weekend, and she would say, ‘I will take care of it’ and would always answer the phone,” Combee said. “And I do appreciate that. I appreciate your spunk and your spirit and the service that you’ve given to us here, and the guiding hand that’s been on that huge enterprise out there.”
Commissioner Bill Braswell complimented Wood-Rogers for informing board members about the details of waste handling, recycling and landfill management.
“You know, somebody else could have just come in here and just kind of talked at us, but you have spent a lot of time educating us, and we really appreciate it,” Braswell said. “And it just shows what a great professional you are in this job.”
A native of El Salvador, Wood-Rogers has a bachelor's degree from Lynn University in Boca Raton and a master's from the University of Miami. She began her career in 1984 as a bookkeeper with Waste Management, a private company, at a Miami-Dade County landfill, according to previous Ledger reporting. She rose to become the county division chief.
In 1994, Wood-Rogers said, Waste Management assigned her to Hong Kong, where she helped manage a newly created landfill. Polk County hired Wood-Rogers in 1998 to lead its waste department.
“They were having issues with the landfill,” she said Thursday, referring to the North Central Landfill, near S.R. 540 and the Polk Parkway. “The county was under the impression that the life of the landfill was going to be only like 20-something years. So they were looking for somebody with collection experience, landfill, private industry, and kind of all fit my background.”
Wood-Rogers said she led a reconfiguration of the disposal area and worked with the University of Florida on projects that extended the potential duration of the landfill, now estimated at up to 150 years.
“So it's not that the county will be in the landfill business for the next 150 years,” she said. “But it gives the commissioners a baseline of what they have now. And then if they decide to do something different, they can compare it to that plan and then assess and analyze what else can be better.”
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The one blemish on Wood-Rogers’ record came in 2002, when the State Attorney's Office issued a reporting finding that her management had cost the county’s recycling operation more than $221,000 over the awarding of a contract. But the report found no evidence of financial improprieties, and Wood-Rogers faced no discipline.
Wood-Rogers said she took a job with Jacksonville in 2005 as the city prepared to host its first Super Bowl, though she continued to live in Lakeland. She also formed her own solid waste company, one she said focused on helping governments to establish sustainable practices.
Polk County brought Wood-Rogers back in 2012, again with the mission of fixing problems. The previous director, Brook Stayer, resigned amid an investigation into overbilling of customers estimated at $1.4 million over six years.
“So we did a self-audit and looked at all the areas that needed to be corrected,” Wood-Rogers said. “Then I met with Jim Freeman, who was the county manager at the time, and the county attorney, and we developed a plan on how to correct all the deficiencies that we had identified.”
Coping with pandemic
Wood-Rogers said she only expected to be back with the county for two or three years, but that stretched out to 11. She and the county have faced new challenges over the past three years, as one of its contractors, FCC Environmental, repeatedly drew complaints for missed trash collections.
Last year, the County Commission declared a local state of emergency, an action that allowed the county to address problems without having to renegotiate its contract with FCC Environmental.
Wood-Rogers said that the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in spring 2020, contributed to waste-collection problems throughout the country.
“Waste Collection is a service that is delivered by people,” she said. “We are 100% people-oriented. And the pandemic hit our industry, I believe, pretty hard, because of the labor, the supply chain. We were not able to get trucks as fast. People got sick.”
Compounding the crisis, Wood-Rogers noted that the generation of home waste rose by 15% to 20% as many people worked from home and ate out less often.
Polk County has taken steps to reduce its reliance on contractors. Last summer, the County Commission approved a plan to have county employees begin collecting trash in the southwest area as a “pilot program.”
Later this year, county commissioners will decide whether to return the area to FCC or continue collecting trash there.
“I will say to you that right now, our average missed collection is pretty much similar to prior to the pandemic,” Wood-Rogers said. “But the tolerance level from all of us is less because we just came out with so many missed collections that even one missed collection is one too many.”
During her time with Polk County, Wood-Rogers has forged partnerships with both the University of Florida and Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland. Under agreements with the county, students at both schools are using artificial intelligence to create three-dimensional models of the landfill, which will allow future directors to operate the site more efficiently.
While managing a series of challenges in her professional life, Wood-Rogers has also coped with personal tragedy. Her husband of 29 years, Jeffrey Wood, also a Polk County employee, died unexpectedly in 2016. She married Dr. Steve Rogers last year.
Wood-Rogers, appointed last year to the Florida Polytechnic Board of Trustees, said she informed Polk County leaders two years ago that she planned to retire as she neared her 62nd birthday, which occurs this month.
“And we have been planning and aligning all the resources to ensure the county will continue to perform, even if I'm not there,” she said. “So we have hired talent, new talent. We have been training, coaching, introducing people to this new way of doing business, since the pandemic. So, yes, it was not something that happened overnight.”
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: Wood-Rogers retires as longtime waste director for Polk County
