Last night at our council meeting, five citizens, who clearly represented the views of other citizens as well, voiced their dissatisfaction regarding the new bulk debris pickup procedures. There have been many problems in execution of the new procedures and the citizens were right on in their criticism. I expressed the city's regret for the inconvenience our citizens have experienced, apologized for the poor quality of service, and asked Staff to have the issues resolved as soon as possible. The Staff will report back to council during next week's work session with solutions to problems which are literally too numerous to mention herein.
The change in debris pickup service from once weekly to a call-in or internet request procedure was justified as a cost saving decision. Already, the administration and additional personnel costs associated with correcting the on-going problems outweigh any savings that would have accrued this year, if in fact the contention is correct that this new procedure would have saved money. It is regrettable that a service which was outstanding (admittedly some believed over the top) was not broken and did not need fixing was replaced based on an inconclusive cost savings rationale. However, it was changed, and now we have to determine how best to recover. This will be decided next week. In the meantime, our sanitation men and women are out there doing their level best to correct the obvious problems.
Jim Cavanaugh
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