About 30,000 homeowners in Phoenix are seeing trash pile up in their neighborhoods as they wait for the city to come and pick up their bulk trash. The city said it is seeing delays as it deals with a staff shortage.
In some neighborhoods in southwest Phoenix, homeowners haven’t had their large trash items picked up for a month. For homeowner Gustavo Valenzuela, he said it’s been about two weeks that his trash has been sitting in his yard.
“Just makes the whole neighborhood look really bad,” he said. “ And going through every neighborhood and seeing it, it tends to attract people that come around looking through the garbage trying to scavenge whatever they can, just kind of salvage whatever they can.”
Valenzuela said he’s seen pickup trucks come through his neighborhood and people look through his pile of trash late at night.
“I feel like it’s a little bit unacceptable. I know they’ve done a little bit of the rescheduling, the scheduling of the picking up of the trash cans,” he said. “The longer it’s taking them, the longer it’s taking them to come around and dump even more and add to the already collected trash pile.”
While regular trash is still being picked up, bulk trash pickup is being delayed.
Joe Guidice, the public works director for the City of Phoenix, says they’re short about 60 drivers, which translates to about a 20% vacancy rate in the solid waste department.
“We really, tremendously appreciate the patience and understanding of our residents. It’s certainly not the type of service we endeavor to provide. We’re going to get this resolved,” Guidice said.
The city said it is giving out a $2,500 hiring incentive, and it is giving a retention bonus for its workers, too. They have hired about 20 people and are getting them trained.
Guidice hopes to have all bulk trash collections caught up by November 21.
“That’s not to say someone who has been waiting for four weeks has to wait until November 21st. We'll probably get to them this week or early into next week,” he said.
The city says it serves about 400,000 homeowners and covers 500 square miles. With the recent monsoon storms, Guidice said that made it a little difficult to catch up on bulk trash collection, too.
If homeowners don’t want to wait to have their large trash items picked up, they can bring them to transfer stations for free. Guidice said they just need to bring a city service bill.
If people can’t bring their bulk trash to a transfer station, Guidice said homeowners can wait to get them picked up.
For a list of the revised bulk trash pickup schedule, click here.
