ANNA MARIA – City commissioners want to see improvements to Waste Management’s current side-door trash and recycling collection services while still considering the company’s request to switch Anna Maria’s trash collection days from Mondays and Thursdays to Tuesdays and Fridays.
Waste Management also wants to change recyclable collections to half of the city on Tuesdays and half of the city on Fridays, with yard waste still collected on Mondays.
On July 10, Waste Management representatives Brenna Haggar, Luigi Pace and Chris Sawallich presented the company’s request to Mayor Mark Short and the city commissioners. No final decisions were made and the commissioners stressed the need for Waste Management to first improve its side-door trash and recycling collection efforts that have fallen far short of the city’s expectations and have been the subject of several commission discussions.
Side-door service entails a Waste Management employee retrieving the trash and recyclable receptacles from the side of a home, emptying them and returning them to the side of the home rather than leaving them at the end of the driveway or alongside the street, where they sometimes sit for days. All non-homesteaded residential properties in Anna Maria, including short-term vacation rentals, are required to use side-door service, which comes at an additional cost.
Haggar serves as Waste Management’s government affairs manager.
“I’m not saying we’re perfect. We know that. With the side-door service, there’s always opportunities for improvement,” she said during her opening remarks.
She noted the company now provides the city with weekly Saturday beach access point dumpster and receptacle collections at no additional cost to the city, rather than the five holiday weekend collections set forth the company’s current contract with the city. That exclusive contract and revenue sharing franchise agreement expires next June.
Haggar told commissioners Manatee County is switching to carted, automated solid waste collections on Oct. 6. Automated collections utilize trucks equipped with mechanical arms that grab and empty the receptacle carts placed curbside while the driver remains in the truck. This eliminates the need for a second employee to manually empty the receptacles.
Haggar said the county wants all its contracted solid waste service providers to operate on the same days when that October change occurs. She said the county’s request will require a significant change in Waste Management’s current route planning and staffing assignments.
“If we don’t make these changes, on Mondays we would need twice the number of trucks, twice the number of drivers only on Mondays. And then those drivers and trucks would be sitting idle the rest of the week. It’s not sustainable for us,” Haggar said.
The Waste Management team did not propose automated collections for Anna Maria.
“Monday pickup is after the busy weekend. That’s when you have the most trash,” Commissioner Gary McMullen said. “That’s when I believe it should be picked up. It shouldn’t matter to me because I have side-door (service), but it does, because they don’t always do that.”
“We hear you loud and clear about the side-door service. That is something that needs a solution,” Haggar acknowledged.
“I think the difference between Thursday and Friday is fairly minimal. But there are probably a lot more (vacation rental) checkouts on a Monday than there are on a Tuesday,” Commissioner Charlie Salem said when noting the proposed Tuesday collections would result in trash accumulating over the weekend and sitting uncollected for an additional
day.
Salem wants to see side-door service improved before he supports changing the collection schedule.
“A lot of this hinges on whether or not that gets solved, and it’s been a problem for quite a while. I don’t have a ton of confidence that there’s a magic bullet out there for that,” he said.
He also noted Waste Management recently imposed a 3% cost increase on its Anna Maria customers.
Commissioners Chris Arendt, John Lynch and Kathy Morgan-Johnson agreed with Salem and share those same concerns.
“We really need to understand the impact of the rental weekends, what that looks like and how that affects the trash pile going to Tuesday versus Monday,” Lynch said.
Lynch said it’s also important for side-door service customers to receive the service they’re paying for.
It was noted that 80% of the Anna Maria’s residential properties currently have side-door service and the Waste Management truck drivers are supposed to use their digital, in-truck tablets to identify which properties require that service.
McMullen suggested a simpler solution: Placing easily identifiable stickers on receptacles that require side-door service. As an alternative, he suggested requiring all residential properties to have side-door service.
He said that would eliminate any confusion as to which properties require that service, but he also noted that some residents who bring their receptacles to the street and back themselves won’t want to pay the additional fee. The Waste Management team said they’d get back to the commission with an estimate on customer pricing for mandatory
side-door service citywide.
“I think there’s a lot to discuss,” Salem said as the discussion ended
with no final decisions proposed or voted on regarding the proposed
change to the current collection days.
