Our staff has been communicating with Republic Services throughout the week. We fully acknowledge that the last several months of inconsistent solid waste and recycling services have caused frustrations, inconveniences, and in some cases hardships. We assure you that we hear your concerns and are committed to finding ways to rectify the solution as quick as we can. Every option is being explored and is not off the table. In an effort to be completely transparent, we felt that information straight from City Hall and what we know as of now would be best.
The solid waste and recycling industry nationwide is facing challenges with driver shortages. We can all sit here and speculate as to why, but nonetheless this isn’t just a local issue. Republic Services has indicated to us they are using mechanisms never used before to attempt to recruit new employees. In the interim, there are Republic drivers running our routes in Odessa that they have brought in from other Republic service areas as far away as Texas to try and fill the gap.
We are looking at ways to find interim solutions to focus on the most important which is getting the solid waste from our customers serviced. Because of the driver shortages, being able to remove curbside recycling drivers from those routes and allowing them to run solid waste routes is looking to be a short term solution. In an effort to provide recycling services to those that wish to do so, we are working to provide a temporary recycling drop off site. More information will be coming on this as the details are worked out.
When we say that all options are being explored, we do mean it. We have had and are having those hard conversations. Staff has looked at rebidding the service, but there are no strong reassurances that there are any other companies around the area that would be able to pick up an additional 2,000 accounts and be able to fill the gap (see above about being a nationwide issue). Our research also indicates that the costs associated with different options are not any more competitive.
We have also discussed not providing solid waste services as part of our municipal utility services and let every resident pick their own, but we will share our concerns with that:
*Not everyone will be able to use the same trash company. This will lead to in some cases multiple heavy trash trucks running up and down city streets on the same day. While we still have work to do across town on streets, we have made huge progress in the last four years and really don’t want our hard work and your tax dollars ruined.
*Some folks will take this opportunity to not pay for trash services and we fear an increase in illegal dumping around the community and/or rural country roads. Additionally, we sense this could have a negative impact on our businesses that have dumpsters at their place of business. It’s no secret that some people will begin using the dumpsters of our businesses, more than likely when the businesses are closed, and we don’t want to do anything that puts an additional burden on our local businesses.
In closing, we understand that the trash situation has not been ideal for the last several months. If we could snap our fingers and fix it, we would do so. We promise you our staff doesn’t like being yelled at, so if there was a great solution we would jump all over it to help save their sanity. There are crews in town today working to pick up today’s routes and missed picks ups from earlier days. As we get updates we will share them. Just know that our City Hall staff is working diligently to remediate issues that arise and are committed to providing you up to date information as we receive it.
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