Trash Talk Heaped on Dallas Sanitation Officials Over Delays

Dallas City Council members heaped trash talk on city sanitation officials Thursday over severe delays on garbage collection reported all around the city.

The problems grew after the Dec. 5 rollout of new schedules which some members say was a failure.

A garbage truck fire early Saturday at a Northwest Dallas sanitation department parking lot made things worse.

The longest collection oversight reported to NBC 5, but far from the only one, was the entire month of December with no garbage collection on Tamia Hall’s street near Fair Park. In many calls she made to complain, she said she heard many excuses from the City of Dallas.

“They were short drivers. The trucks or something was breaking down. But for me it's still, if you're passing, if you give everybody else service, why would you pass up this little street here,” she said.

The Dec. 5 change to five Dallas collection days a week instead of four was to give drivers and workers a more manageable workload and improve service 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 having to flip from one set of maps and routes to the other one, the transition did not go off as well as I obviously would have liked,” Council said.

Still, he told members that collection is mostly on schedule now.

Several of them replied that they are still receiving complaints from residents.

“I heard you say earlier there are weeks completed on time, and my experience and it sounds like the experience of others is that is just not the case,” Councilmember Gay Donnell Willis said.

She and Councilman Chad West said this trash issue has generated far more complaints to their offices than another other issues in their time at the city council.

“We have to answer to our constituents. They're looking at us, and they're like, ‘Why can't you get this right,’” West said.

Sanitation officials said half as many trucks as they really need were in service, but the switch was scheduled long ago and they went through with it.

“It was kind of set up from the beginning to not be successful,” Committee Chair Paula Blackmon said. “Somebody needs to understand what resources are needed in order to make a successful transition.”

A fire early Saturday morning at a Northeast Dallas sanitation parking lot took four more garbage trucks out of service.

Dallas Fire-Rescue Thursday reported that investigators ruled the cause of that fire as "undetermined." They said that no ignition spot could be pinpointed and no surveillance video exists from the time the fire began, so multiple possible causes for the fire could not be ruled out.

Council members also said the change was poorly timed during the holiday period when some homes generate far more trash.

Councilmember Carolyn King Arnold said these explanations matter little to senior citizens who call her to complain about their uncollected trash.

“It’s good for us to talk about process, but when we’re talking to our community, you know how it is, they don’t want to hear all that. They just want their trash picked up,” Arnold said.

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

“What's happening now is unacceptable and our residents demand and deserve much better,” Councilman Jaime Resendez said.

Tamia Hall said she expects that her street will not be missed anymore after the attention she has received.

“I think they’ll get this street. If they don’t get nobody else's street, they’ll get this street,” she said.

Sure enough, there was a collection on schedule for her pick-up day Thursday.

The sanitation director said he is still recommending a switch to all collection at the curb and not in alleys where they exist to help his department switch to one standard model of trucks and reduce damage to trucks and alleys.

But he said he will slow down that plan until these problems are completely solved.