Fort Wayne, IN
A citizen frustrated with the garbage situation sends a message to Mayor Steve Updike.
After months of fielding citizens’ complaints about its cost-saving, bimonthly garbage pickup, the City of Huntington may revert to a weekly schedule.
“We’re working on it. We’re trying to figure something out so we can go back to weekly,” Street Commissioner Dave Spencer said. “There is nothing confirmed, but we’re working really hard. It’s something we want to do.”
Spencer explained the Street Department has lost a third of its workforce in less than two years.
“We had 18 (full time) people and we have 11 now. We’re trying to work it out,” Spencer said, noting changing back to a weekly garbage pickup will take a cooperative effort. “If I can get other departments to help me out a few days a week maybe we can get this done.”
For many residents, this effort may be a welcome change. At Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, several residents came before Council to protest what they call a smelly situation.
“You can’t walk the dog without wanting to pass out,” one resident remarked. “You need a gas mask.”
Resident Darlla Tompkins, who lives with her young grandchild, said she isn’t looking forward to the summer heat slow-cooking the child’s diapers for weeks at a time.
“I’m concerned with the summertime coming around and the maggots I’m going to be getting and the animals I’m going to be getting,” she said, noting in months with five weeks there is a three-week gap between garbage pickups – a time period that recently allowed 19 bags of garbage to collect at her residence. “Something has got to be done about this situation. We just can’t have it and I’m here to tell you I can’t deal with nastiness like that.”
Resident Mike Chalmers said he is tired of picking up all the trash from the neighborhood that blows into his yard.
“I thought the trash looked nasty downtown. It was blowing everywhere,” he said. “I had people’s trash from three doors down in my yard … I picked up a whole bag of somebody else’s trash.”
Huntington Resident Tina Disney informed council members she recently distributed a petition and collected nearly 1,000 signatures from residents who are willing to pay a $10 fee to have regular garbage pickup – an initiative voted down 4-3 by Common Council last November.
Street Department employee Brad Borntreger, who helped Disney with the petition, told Common Council members many of the people he spoke with weren’t even aware of who their councilman was.
“You guys need to go around and knock on their doors, tell them who you are and get their advice instead of being seven people up there trying to make a decision for them,” he said. “You really need to take a careful look at this … find out what the citizens in Huntington do want.”
Councilman Jason Fields, who voted against the fee last year, said he always makes an effort to be very accessible to the citizens in his district.
“I take a lot of phone calls on both my cell phone and home phone and e-mails, I respond to (citizens) and take care of their issues … that’s extremely important,” Fields said, noting back in November the economy was in worse shape than it is now. “We had over 300 people at that meeting (and many) voiced their opinion against a garbage fee. I had a lot of e-mails and a lot of phone calls against it. I’m sure there were people that were for it, but there were a lot of people that said, ‘I don’t want it.’”
Fields said he also didn’t feel the fee was presented to well to Council.
“You have to sell people on a project and I wasn’t sold on it … The number thrown out was ‘around 6500’ (people will pay the fee). ‘Around’ can mean different things … There were not facts,” Fields said, explaining the fee amount changed several times during Council’s discussion. “There were numerous things that were not put together in a good manner and I couldn’t vote on something I couldn’t feel comfortable to vote on.”
Fields said he now believes a garbage fee may be vital to the city’s financial well-being.
“I’ve done a lot of research since November and I’ve dug through information like crazy. I’ve asked a lot of questions. I’ve looked at property tax situations and at what the surrounding communities are doing,” he said. “Where we are at in our budget and where we’re going to be by the end of the year, I believe that some sort of fee is something that may need to take place because without a fee we’re going to be in huge financial problems – more than we are currently.”
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