Last year, Pittsfield’s city council voted to approve Mayor Peter Marchetti’s plan to replace the existent unlimited curbside waste pickup policy with a toter system. By the end of the year, the new arrangement was largely in place, and by January the Marchetti administration proudly proclaimed toters were saving the city money and increasing recycling rates. A month later, the tone has changed as cracks in the program remain unresolved.
At the request of the city council, Commissioner of Public Works Ricardo Morales appeared before the body to respond to issues with the rollout and the contractor tasked with collecting Pittsfield’s waste.
“We're managing Casella as best we can," he told the council. "Casella has some issues are working through. They're unfortunately being reflected more predominantly in the Friday route, in terms of missing streets and not having or not responding to adequately, unfortunately, because they don't normally work on Saturdays, so that exacerbates the problem, and it's not an excuse, but they need to be there to respond.”
The commissioner admitted it had been a struggle to communicate with Casella, but also defended the overall efficacy of the new waste disposal system.
“It's very much a fraction of the overall work they're doing, but that fraction is very valid, and it's very important to get it right, because it can't undermine the rest of the work that they're doing and what we're doing,” he said.
Morales then synopsized the issues with Casella’s services from the city’s perspective.
“We have poor internal communication, something that we identified," said the commissioner. "We have route verification- When their guys go out to do work, and maybe they change shifts or they change routes, they're potentially not verifying what everything within all the streets, within their route. Lack of proactive tracking of their issues- Having us be tracking their problems for them is not realistic for us, it should be them tracking their own problems. They've had some staffing challenges, mechanical failures, and some other limitations.”
Ward 5 councilor Patrick Kavey said the ongoing issues with waste collection is a public relations disaster for the city.
“I understand we're saving money, and I think that's great," he said. "A lot of people who didn't have complaints with me over the totes and were actually like, I like the way it's cleaning up the neighborhood, are now so upset and their blaming the totes, the carts, because they're like, before we had these, they would pick up our trash. Now that we have these, they don't pick up our trash.”
Kavey said that based on conversations he’s had with Casella after fielding angry constituent phone calls left him with more concerns about the contractor.
“When I called Steve on Saturday and was discussing this with him, I reminded him of his contract and how they're supposed to pick up within a day- He didn't know that was even in their contract," said the councilor. "And then I brought up the point about, maybe you should print out a list with the street names and then cross them off as you do the street. And I assumed the first time I said that to him that he was kidding when he was like, yeah, we'll do something like that, great idea. But it seems like they may not have actually had a procedure in place to know exactly where their trucks were going to go, which doesn't make a ton of sense to me, since they knew before we got the carts.”
Kavey pressed Morales on details of Pittsfield’s agreement with Casella.
KAVEY: Councilor Warren actually took a look at the contract after I called him rather angry on Saturday. And he went through it and noticed that there's no repercussion if they don't pick up the trash. So, how can we hold them accountable if they continue to do it? There's nothing in our contract that can hold them accountable.
MORALES: There's nothing specific about missing or not picking the trash, but if they don't fulfill the contract, which is picking up the trash-
KAVEY: It’s a breach.
MORALES: -they can be held accountable.
KAVEY: Well, I spoke to the solicitor about something else today and I asked him, what exactly happens if they're a breach of their contract?
MORALES: I think what you're referring to, is there's no penalty built in the contract for not picking up the trash on a particular street or missing something. But there is, there could be breach of contract with-
KAVEY: That's the thing, when it gets to week 11 or week 12, when is it breach of contract? I guess that's my question, if we're not going to penalize them each time they miss it.
MORALES: We- I don't have an answer to that. We need to get, we need to make them accountable for this, and we need to have them go towards results, see the results, see that they're actually doing what they're saying they need to do.
Kavey pointed out he was one of the votes against the toter system last year.
“Part of the reason I was so uncomfortable voting in favor of that and didn't vote in favor of it was because the contract wasn't finalized," he said. "And then when we're looking back at it and we're seeing that things that we discussed in that meeting weren't included in the contract – some were, not all – it's a little frustrating now that we're four months into it and we're having these issues.”
In a message to the city council, Casella detailed its efforts to improve its services, including assigning a fulltime, dedicated dispatcher for its Pittsfield operations, increasing performance audits, and bolstering communication with drivers.
