By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Waste Pro’s contract for garbage collection in Chiefland is officially dangling by a thin thread.
City Manager Mary Ellzey served notice at Monday’s Chiefland City Commission meeting that she and her staff are fed up with fielding customer complaints about the company’s failure to pick up commercial garbage.
She said the city’s contract gives the city commission the right to declare the company a “habitual violator” if one more violation occurs. The city would give the company 90 days of written notice the contract is being cancelled.
“The bottom line is that we’re up to our eyebrows with dealing with customers who are paying for service that is not being provided,” Ellzey said. “It’s a lot of work. We entered into the contract in December of 2016. Since that time it has gotten progressively worse. We don’t know what else to do. We hear from the customers. They want refunds. They want credit. We cannot provide that, so we ask the commission to enforce the provisions of the contract.”
Mayor Chris Jones said he was one of the business owners that complained about the company failing to pick up garbage at his store, but he noted that because two commissioners were absent from the meeting, Rollin Hudson and Norman Weaver, he didn’t want to make a decision without the full board present.
Jones said one of the reasons he favored Waste Pro getting the contract several years ago was the number of local people the company employed. He said that’s another part of the issue, but at the same time, he said businesses are complaining to him about the lack of garbage pickup.
“Anytime I walk into a restaurant in Chiefland and it’s owned by somebody the conversation is what is going on with Waste Pro,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to make a decision tonight because of these two gentlemen (Weaver and Hudson) that are missing. They definitely need to be here for a decision such as this.”
Dayna Miller, a Waste Pro official who handles municipal marketing and government relations in North Florida, said the problems with commercial garbage pickup have resulted from a staffing shortage caused by employees testing positive for COVID-19 or reporting they came in contact with someone who was positive. They have to be quarantined for two weeks.
“COVID really, really has hit us hard, just like any other company, just like a lot of municipalities. We’re really trying to work hard to hire qualified drivers. We’re struggling with the job pool and the labor pool out here,” she said. “We’ve enacted some hiring incentives to try to encourage better-qualified candidates. We’ve brought in additional resources from other divisions from across Florida whether it’s equipment or personnel to try to help the situation.”
Miller said 1-day of sickness turns into 14 days of quarantine when testing reveals the employee is positive for COVID-19. In the days before the arrival of COVID-19, she said someone would call in sick and they would be out possibly one or two days.
“Now it is one day, and maybe they aren’t sick, but they were exposed and so it’s automatically they have to quarantine for 14 days whether they‘re sick or not,” Miller said. “We’ve done a lot to protect our employees at all the locations and while they are out, but we can’t control what they go home to. That’s what we’ve been running into – I’ve been exposed – and unfortunately as you know with liability and insurance and all that, once they say they’ve been exposed we have to run a test.”
Miller said the company’s top priority has been to use its existing resources including personnel to ensure residential garbage is picked up. She said the company has brought in an additional $1 million in replacement equipment to help the Fanning Springs district, which serves Chiefland. She said she wasn’t making any excuses nor was she challenging the statements made by Ellzey. She said Ellzey was accurate. She said she and Ellzey have met several times.
“My apologies, but that doesn’t fix anything. I don’t say that lightly but I wanted to say what we’ve been trying to do. We will respect the decision of the commission,” she said.
Commissioner Lance Hayes suggested Waste Pro write a letter to residents to explain what’s going on. Miller thought the letter should go to businesses but she thought it was a good idea. She said the letter would indeed be written and given to Ellzey to read before it is sent out to Waste Pro customers.
Ellzey said the problem with garbage pickup by Waste Pro wasn’t exclusively related to the impact of COVID-19.
“Lack of employees, lack of help — which isn’t just now started through COVID-19,” Ellzey said. “It has been going on for three years. It’s just progressively getting worse. The garbage doesn’t get picked up. We have an incident like we discussed at the last meeting; the dumpster was overflowing. We can’t have that. All we want is for the garbage to be picked up.”
Asked if the Levy County Department of Health has contacted the city or Waste Pro about the lack of garbage pickup, Ellzey and Miller said they haven’t heard from the health department.
“I can tell you we are very aware there are certain types of businesses that – I hate to prioritize one business over another – but there are certain types of businesses like restaurants and daycares that deal with the health department and when are having short staffing we know they are the ones that need to be picked up first as much as we can,” Miller responded.
Miller said Waste Pro is working on other ways to improve the quality of service in Chiefland.
Ellzey and City Attorney Norm Fugate told Spotlight after the meeting that it would take only one failure to pick up garbage in Chiefland, whether residential or commercial and the city could cancel the contract.
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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting January 25, 2021; Posted January 25, 2021
