(Letter to the Editor - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce and some of the City Council members are asleep at the wheel and have been for the past several months!

As a result, a trash collection crisis is imminent. Imagine what it would be like if your streets were littered with trash, feral animals – rats, raccoons, cats, squirrels, stray dogs – ravaging through piles of trash. A stench of waste emanating from the piles of foul debris pollute the otherwise sweet air around us. Roaches, spiders and snakes invade our streets as putrid liquid sludge washes downhill.

Already the mayor has suspended recycling, an essential service, indefinitely. Over the past several months, the City’s Sanitation Department, which provides one of the most essential services any municipality can provide, has been plagued by staff shortages, frequent call-offs, excessive overtime due to the absenteeism, inefficient operations and poor management. At this moment, about a fourth of the department’s positions are vacant.

Has the mayor done anything about it? Not much. He’s let the problem fester and grow, like a puss-filled boil waiting to be lanced. No recruitment beyond the city’s own website.

They’re trying to train workers to become CDL class B licensed drivers, he will say. But that process takes three to six months, and not all the workers want to be drivers. Ideally, every truck should have three employees assigned to it, a driver and two “slingers.” Yet the mayor wants them all to be trained to drive, which is fine but hardly necessary. The slingers aren’t even listed as employees in the City’s Classification and Pay Plan. The City is using four work-release inmates to help out.

To their credit, the Council has approved a 4.2% COLA pay increase for all City employees effective July first, but the Sanitation workers are still grossly underpaid.

Why are the workers calling off so much? Because the job is hard. Physically. Cuts, scrapes, sprains and frequent back aches. Slips and falls, colds and flu in bad weather. And they are forced to work lots of overtime.

Another issue was poor management. But the department remains inefficient.

The solution is two-fold and easy: a significant pay increase of another $3 – $4 an hour (since COVID-19 pay has increased nationwide substantially), and heavy recruitment. Advertising in the paper and on TV and radio, attending job fairs, work with trucker training programs. Has the City done that? I don’t think so.

Now the Council is taking the easy way out. They want to contract out the Sanitation function, which is a horrible idea! Rates will increase. Services will be cut. Trash collection will be limited to one or two bags a week. Trash for non-payers will not be collected, and worst of all, door collection of garbage from the elderly and disabled will NOT occur.

I urge the Mayor and Council to fix the problem, not contract it out! Do what the citizens require and keep the City’s trash collection going! And reinstate the essential service of collecting recycled materials. Do the RIGHT thing; do what you were elected to do.

Russ Bowers

Parkersburg