PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The city of Parkersburg is on the brink of privatizing its municipal garbage service. The city council Monday voted to advance the measure to a second reading and will vote on passage at their next meeting in February.
“Hopefully they’ll approve it and we can get a contract not just enforced, but get new service started with the new provider in early spring and give our resident customers reliable, timely, and quality service that they have quite frankly been paying for and have not received for the last couple of years,” said Mayor Tom Joyce.
According to Joyce the move is in response to several years of struggles to find adequate staffing for the city’s sanitation department. The city has been unable to keep adequate CDL holders on staff to operate the garbage trucks in the city. The city has taken steps to try and bolster employment. The city even created an in-house training and certification program to get a CDL. However, those efforts have been not created enough workers to keep up. Joyce said along with a lack of workers, there is also a lack of available candidates. Plus it was made worse by the pay component. CDL holders can make much more in the private sector than driving for the city.
Last year the city sent out a Request For Proposal from private waste haulers. They have a tentative proposal with Waste Management Incorporated. According to Joyce they’ll be able to finalize the contract when the council agrees to it and get the service in place as soon as possible. In recent months, the city has had to canibalize other departments to get the garbage picked up in a timely manner.
“Whether it be the street department or street cleaning department, we’ve been bringing those folks over and for lack of a better term robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s just unsustainable,” the Mayor tells MetroNews.
The proposal advanced on a 6-3 vote by city council. The vote followed a 90 minute public hearing on the matter.
Joyce said going to the private service would actually lower the cost of garbage bills in the city. The contract being proposed would not include recycling. Joyce said because of a few questions raised in the public hearing, a proposal on how to handle recycling has been tabled until a future meeting. Under the current city run system, residents pay $22 monthly for unlimited trash pickup and recycling services. The proposed privatization would separate the services, with trash collection costing less but recycling adding $15 monthly.