Valley Patriot

Councilors Fuming Over Trash

A new trash collection schedule has left some Lawrence residents with 9 days of garbage pile up in the city. BFI, the private trash collection company responsible for garbage pick up, decided that the Fourth of July holiday would be a good time to change the pickup schedule so that every Lawrence resident gets their trash picked up all on the same day.

The problem is that most people were not notified of the new collection schedule leaving tons of uncollected trash littering city streets.

Animals and bums have already ravaged some of the trash on city sidewalks leaving the wind to blow much of it through yards and neighborhood parks.

Members of the Lawrence City Council expressed their outrage tonight at the lack of effective management and communication skills exhibited by the mayors office.

District "E" councilor Gil Frechette apologized to his constituents on behalf of the Council and city officials saying that his district has been hit hardest by the lagging trash collection. "Trash collection in my district gets picked up on Monday. This should have been more carefully planned. They should have at least picked up trash on Monday."

"If ever there was a perfect example of why Lawrence needs to be taken over by the federal government or at least install a professional city manager this issue is it," lamented Councilor at Large Michael Sweeney.

Mayor Sullivan is on vacation this week leaving Myles Burke in charge. Mayoral aid Myles Burke apologized to the Council and residents of the city promising a full compliment of 15 trash trucks "sweeping through the city" on Wednesday and Thursday to handle the excess trash. No mention of how much the additional collections would cost the city.

The problem with the trash situation is two fold:

#1) poor communication. The mayor's office did a horrendous job of informing people in the city that he schedule was changing to Friday pick up service for all residents. On top of that, on the very first week the schedule changes, Friday is a holiday meaning that trash was not scheduled to be picked up until Saturday. This would leave South Lawrence residents 12 days without trash pickup.

#2) No contingency plan was ever made for those residents who put out trash this week expecting to have it collected.

Mayor Mike Sullivan is always running around the city talking about how image is most important. And while I disagree, his vacationing (again) without making sure the situation was taken care of is inexcusable. Driving through the city it is hard to think of anything that destroys Lawrence's image more than tons of trash piling up on city streets in 80+ degree weather for more than 12 days.

Not only does it make the city look like a third world nation, but it poses a serious health hazard.

Consolidating the city trash schedule so that everyone's garbage gets picked up on the same day all at the same time is a great innovation in a city where we keep making the same mistakes year after year. The new schedule is a good thing, however, Mayor Sullivan dropped the ball by (once again) not FOLLOWING THROUGH to make sure it would be implemented properly before he left for yet another vacation.

"One of the things we have to do in this city is put a mechanism in place to make sure we can disseminate information in various languages to the public in an effective manner," Councilor Sweeney told his fellow Councilors. "We just didn't do that here and there is just no excuse for it." Sweeney also said he wouldn't apologize to the public as his colleague Councilor Frechette had done. "It's just not in me I guess," Sweeney said.