Parkersburg resident Eric Engle, a member of the committee gathering signatures for a referendum petition on a city ordinance approving a sanitation contract with Waste Management, speaks during the public forum at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

PARKERSBURG – Many speakers at Tuesday’s Parkersburg City Council meeting welcomed changes to the public forum but opposed ordinances related to contracts for sanitation and recycling services.

Some speakers said council should table an ordinance amending city code governing sanitation until the outcome of a referendum petition on the ordinance authorizing a contract with Waste Management for trash service is determined. At least three council members agreed, but a motion to table failed in a 5-3 vote, with Councilman Mike Reynolds absent.

“You know it’s pending. Save yourselves the headache,” Parkersburg resident Brian Hayden said in a public hearing on the ordinance amending the code. “We’re not enemies here. Don’t consider it capitulation. Consider it cooperation.”

The public hearing was held because the change involves reducing the sanitation fee from $22 to $21. But it also reflects the contract, approved on a 6-3 vote in January, for Waste Management to take over trash pickup duties and for Rumpke to begin a subscription-based curbside recycling program, which passed on final reading Tuesday.

Signatures are being collected for a referendum petition that, if successful, would force council to reconsider the ordinance. If they did not vote to repeal it, it would go before the voters on an upcoming ballot.

Parkersburg City Council President Andrew Borkowski, right, speaks during Tuesday’s council meeting as Councilwoman Wendy Tuck listens. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Organizers must submit at least 2,763 signatures – 15% of the registered voters in the 2024 general election – to the city clerk’s office by Friday.

Councilwoman Sharon Kuhl said those signatures would still have to be verified, so the process won’t be over on Friday. She was among the members who voted 5-3 to approve the ordinance on final reading.

“In the meantime, we need trash service,” Kuhl said. “We do not have the guys; we do not have the manpower.”

Councilman Chris Rexroad, who voted with Councilwoman Wendy Tuck and Councilman Zak Huffman to table the ordinance and against its passage, asked when Waste Management would be able to take over. Mayor Tom Joyce said it would be “sometime this spring.”

Rexroad asked what the harm would be in tabling the ordinance.

Parkersburg City Councilwoman Sharon Kuhl, center, discusses her opposition to tabling an ordinance amending the city code regarding sanitation as Councilman Dave McCrady, left, and Councilman Roger Brown listen. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

“We’re still going to have to pick up the trash until Waste Management’s ready,” he said.

Joyce said the code needs amended regardless and he opposed tabling.

Just four employees remain in sanitation out of more than two dozen budgeted and those individuals have all indicated their plans to retire, transfer to another department, or leave city employment with the service about to move to a contract basis, Joyce said. If the referendum petition is successful, he said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

If the Waste Management contract is nullified, the city might have to shift to a system where residents sign up with eligible trash haulers on their own. Joyce said that might require action by him under emergency provisions but the way the system is operating now is unsustainable.

“We continue to bring multiple employees over from the Streets, Street Cleaning and Parks departments” to run trash routes, he said. “These guys have got to go back to their regular jobs at some point.”

Joyce said one worker was late operating a salt truck when snow covered many roads Monday because he was working a trash route.

“If you think we’re going to have the Public Works Department, other guys out there all summer, then none of you are allowed to call or text me about a problem on a street,” he said to council members.

Parkersburg resident Ray Vannoy challenged council’s ability to vote on the ordinance Tuesday, saying the city did not provide the legally required five days for the public to inspect the ordinance. A legal advertisement announcing the hearing was published Feb. 18, but Vannoy noted the city building was closed the following Saturday and Sunday, so no one could review the ordinance in person then and said the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting had not been posted on the website as of Sunday.

City Attorney Blaine Myers said Wednesday that the city published a legal notice of the public hearing in accordance with the law.

The final reading of the ordinance approving the recycling contract with Rumpke passed by the same 5-3 margin. Under it and the other ordinance, everyone will be pay a $1.50 recycling surcharge as part of the $21 sanitation fee. Those who want to participate in the recycling program would pay an additional $3 a month.

“I think it’s totally wrong to charge me, individually, to recycle and let everybody else throw it all away,” Parkersburg resident William Smith said.

Joyce has said most customers did not recycle when it was included with the city’s sanitation service and advocated having those who do recycle pay to support the program.

A resolution changing council rules so any topic could be addressed in the public forum, setting speakers’ time limit back to three minutes and restoring a council forum passed 8-0. Several people in the public forum spoke in favor of that, although Hayden said the part of the rule stating speakers shall not make slanderous remarks or use profanity gave him pause.

“Just because a person’s feelings were hurt does not mean they were slandered,” he said, adding the part about profanity could face litigation.

Parkersburg resident Caci Petrehn said council’s vote in March 2025 to limit the public forum increased tension rather than decreasing it.

“If anything, removing open public forum has pushed frustration outside of the chamber instead of allowing it to be addressed inside of it,” she said.

Council approved an amendment intended to clarify that responses from city officials would not count against the three minutes given to individual speakers and 30 minutes overall for the public forum.

“Sometimes our explanations can get lengthy,” Tuck said.

The vote was 5-3, with Councilmen Dave McCrady and Roger Brown and council President Andrew Borkowski opposed. Borkowski said he did not think the amendment was necessary since it was not his intent that remarks by city officials take up public forum time.

“I would never vote for something that would allow council to filibuster the time given to the public,” he said.

Council’s Personnel Committee will meet at 6 p.m. today in the Meeks Conference Room next to council chambers on the second floor of the Municipal Building. The agenda includes discussion of Joyce’s proposal to bring the minimum pay for city workers up to $15 an hour in the upcoming budget year, reclassifying a land surveyor position and creating two new positions, a budget analyst in the Finance Department and an events and marketing coordinator in the Development Department.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.