Garbage talk hit Dallas sanitation officials over delays

On Thursday, Dallas City Council members lashed out with garbage at city sanitation officials due to severe garbage collection delays reported across the city.

Problems escalated after new schedules were introduced on December 5, which some participants said failed.

A garbage truck fire early Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Northwest Dallas Sanitation Department exacerbated the situation.

NBC 5 reports that the longest garbage collection oversight, but far from the only one, was all of December, when there was no garbage collection at Tamia Hall near Fair Park. In the many calls she made to complain, she said she heard a lot of excuses from the city of Dallas.

“They were undersized drivers. Trucks or something broke. But it doesn’t matter to me if you’re passing by, if you’re serving everyone else, why would you pass by this little street, she said.

The Dec. 5 change to five days of gathering in Dallas instead of four was made in order to give drivers and workers a more manageable workload and better services to residents. That’s what Sanitation Director Jay Council told City Council members at a special meeting Thursday of the Environment and Sustainability Committee.

“And actually because I had to switch from one set of maps and routes to another, the transition didn’t go as well as I obviously would have liked,” Council said.

However, he told attendees that the collection is now largely on schedule.

Some of them replied that they still receive complaints from residents.

“I’ve heard you say earlier that there are weeks completed on time, and my experience, and it looks like other people’s experience, is that that’s just not the case,” council member Gay Donnell Willis said.

She and council member Chad West said the garbage problem generated far more complaints to their offices than other issues during their time on the city council.

“We have to answer to the voters. They look at us and say, “Why can’t you do it right?” West said.

The sanitary authorities said they had half as many trucks in operation as they actually needed, but the crossing had been planned for a long time, and they carried it out.

“It was designed from the start not to succeed,” committee chair Paula Blackmon said. “Someone needs to understand what resources are needed for a successful transition.”

A fire early Saturday morning at a sanitary parking lot in Northeast Dallas knocked out four more garbage trucks.

The Dallas Fire and Rescue Service said on Thursday that investigators have ruled the cause of the fire “undetermined.” They said the location of the fire could not be pinpointed, and there were no CCTV footage from the start of the fire, so several possible causes of the fire could not be ruled out.

Council members also said the change was unfortunate during the holiday season, when some homes generate much more trash.

Council member Caroline King Arnold said these explanations mean little to older people who call her to complain about the uncollected garbage.

“It’s good for us to talk about the process, but when we talk to our community, you know what it’s like, they don’t want to hear it all. They just want their garbage removed,” Arnold said.

Sanitation officials said they hope better truck repairs and better knowledge of collection routes will solve the problems.

“What is happening now is unacceptable and our residents demand and deserve much better,” council member Jaime Rezendes said.

Tamiya Hall said she expects her street to no longer be overlooked after the attention she has received.

“I think they will get this street. If they don’t get someone else’s street, they will get this street,” she said.

Of course, on Thursday she had a scheduled meeting.

The director of sanitation said he continues to recommend moving to curbside collection rather than alleyways where they exist to help his department transition to one standard truck model and reduce damage to trucks and alleyways.

But he said he would slow down the plan until those issues were fully resolved.