INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Board of County Commissioners Tuesday rejected a request by staff to invoke Waste Management’s performance bond to compensate the taxpayers for a failure to effectively roll-out the new solid waste and recycling collection franchise agreement as scheduled on Oct. 1.
Instead, commissioners demanded that any remaining hauling service, routing or billing issues be cleared up immediately, and that Waste Management ensure that they have adequate resources to handle the confusion of holiday pickups after Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Waste Management was chosen over Republic Services and other haulers earlier this year to receive a countywide franchise for single-stream recycling plus once-per-week, non-mandatory refuse collection, both services using a automated, rolling cart system. The changes are designed not only to reduce costs, but to increase recycling participation to help the county meet an environmental mandate to recycle 75 percent of the solid waste stream by the year 2020.
Like they have at each meeting of the County Commission since late September, and a special meeting last week, representatives from Waste Management provided a status report to the Board and to the public on efforts to distribute new garbage and recycling carts, and on managing routes to make sure what customers put out to the curb gets picked up on the proper day.
“There’s no fixing the past three weeks,” Commissioner Joe Flescher said. “I think we’re getting too wound up in technology. We’re forgetting it’s people putting trash out to the curb.”
Issues identified over the past month have included problems with the call center, the previous vendor not providing customer lists and issues with technology and with the software needed to track bar-coded carts. County Administrator Joe Baird pointed out that everyone was aware that customer lists would not be furnished.
Waste Management’s attorney and top officials will be meeting with the County’s management and legal staff sometime in the next week to discuss what remedies the County may have in the franchise agreement via administrative charges to reimburse the taxpayers for lost or missed service.
