Wasn’t the trash removed? Dallas residents complain trash piles up due to new schedule

DALLAS. For 18 years, Lee Ruiz has been taking out the garbage from his Oak Cliff home on schedule every time, but now it has only happened twice in the past month and a half.

“It was perfect,” Ruiz said. “What we didn’t know was that it would completely fall apart.”

In December, Dallas introduced a new garbage collection schedule, moving from four days a week to every weekday in an effort to save money and reduce delays.

Instead, Councilman Chad West, representing the Oak Cliff area, said the issue has generated more complaints than any other issue in his past four years in office.

“You have neighbors that you never hear from the whole time you are in the office, and this has brought out neighbors who say we just want our basic trash to be picked up,” he said. “Another gentleman called me and said he was taking his garbage to his office because he did not trust the city.”

Some missed the news about the change in the schedule and put the containers on the wrong days. Others throw away the trash properly but don’t clean it up for weeks.

“Our neighbors moved to Colorado, so we also use their trash cans. Everyone is trying their best,” Ruiz said.

At a council briefing last week, officials blamed bad weather and public holidays for the problems.

“We have always had holidays. We always had bad weather, and of course it was a day behind, but it was always improved,” Ruiz said. “Now that’s clearly a problem.”

“Oak Cliff is really behind on this,” West said. “I’ve heard from my colleagues that this is citywide and some areas are affected more than others.”

He said older neighborhoods like East Dallas are also having problems. Residents complain about health problems and even rodents.

West expects the issues to be fixed within the next two to three weeks, and if not, he said they should renegotiate the contracts. He and other council members are working to get trash bill credits for residents who didn’t have proper pickup trucks. He uses office funds to pay for emergency trash pickup on Monday and Tuesday for those in dire need.

“I think people are getting frustrated,” Ruiz said. “I would like to go back to what it was. They never let our trash through until the deployment happened.”