CITY WALLOWING IN GARBAGE AFTER TRANSFER OF COLLECTION CONTRACT

(Photos from behind businesses at a strip mall near the corner of E. Price and 77-83 Frontage road. If you zoom in the photo, another two dumpsters down the alley are also overflowing.)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Have you experienced problems in the trash collection in your neighborhood?

And if you're a business owner, has the collection of the trash piling up in dumpsters been disrupted so that now the dumpsters are overflowing and calls to GMS have been met with the news that the company no longer has the trash collection contract and that it has been taken over by Republic Services?

If it's any consolation to you, you're not alone as complaints about residential and business trash collection pile up like black plastic trash bags outside the overflowing dumpsters.

Business owners along Price and the frontage roads say that their trash collection has been delayed for days and that after calling GMS, the waste collection company that had ben operating month to month for years, they were told that they no longer had the city contract and that they should call Republic to find out when they would be scheduled to pick up.

"They said they no longer had the contract and to call Republic," said a business owner. "When we called them, they said they would be over to pick up before 5 p.m., but that was two days ago. The whole alley is full of dumpsters overflowing with trash."

Residents, too, have ben plagued with delayed trash pickup schedules resulting in trash receptacles standing on the curb for days, often creating health hazards.

"I live in a cul-de-sac and we are used to the GMS trash pickup schedule," said a resident in a subdivision of Morrison Road west of McAllen Road past the Academy sports store. "But this past week they were days late getting here and the trash receptacles stayed out in the street for days. The other night a drunk driver ran over three of them and all the trash spilled out into the street creating flies and a foul odor across the neighborhood."

He said that the wind carried the spilled trash to the property of the woman who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac and littered her yard with refuse.

District 4 Commissioner Pedro Cardenas said he has been receiving complaints from residents in his district as the city tries to transition between both companies to bring the matter under control.

(In the photo at right, garbage spills over into the alley and in the distance, an overflowing dumpster is visible.)

"We are having issues with the change (from one company to the other). I am getting calls and referring them to Republic almost every day."

When informed of the problems at the strip mall, Cardenas said he had let Republic know about the overflowing dumpsters behind businesses at the corner of W. Price and Frontage roads.

"I texted them to let them know," he said and and added that the service interruption should have never happened. 

"Both companies were told they had eight months to complete the transition," he said..

District 2 commissioner Linda Macias said that at the last moment, GMS had missed the deadline to submit their proposal for trash pickup and the contract went to Republic by default.

"GMS missed the deadline and didn't submit their contract," she said. "So Republic got the vote."

Yet, residents and business owners alike say the transition has been a messy one and that they are experiencing trouble with trash piling up behind their businesses or in the curb in front of residents' homes.

An exasperated  business manager surveyed the line of overflowing dumpsters on the service alley behind the business that included bars and restaurants and shook his head.

"If you ask me, it stinks."