Since early Spring 2019 Stittsville residents have been complaining loud and clear about the lack of garbage service being provided by Waste Management (WM) to our community. These complaints, or lack of service, were timely as Waste Management had entered into negotiations with the City for the extension of their contract that ends on May 31, 2020.
Councillor Gower and his office staff have been fielding complaints from residents for six months and constantly communicating directly to the community with updates on delays and new pick-up times on his social media platforms and in person.
Yes, Waste Management had a fire in July resulting in the loss of eight trucks, but when you are a large business, should a back-up plan not be in place for incidents such as this? Bringing in additional trucks or renting vehicles and adding more manpower would have helped to solve the situation.
Worthy of note, the City is also planning for its first major update to the Solid Waste Master Plan since 2003, with staff assessing options in relation to the waste contract renewals for June 1, 2020.
(City of Ottawa Waste to Landfill 2019 data. Graphic: City of Ottawa)
During the negotiations between the City and WM no deal could be reached between the two parties. Needless to say, the contract with WM will not be renewed. The City set out to seek west-end proposals and approached their in-house team Miller Waste Systems (MWS) to submit their proposals for the west-end contracts. Miller Waste was already brought in to Stittsville during the summer to pick-up the waste and alleviate some of the existing problems.
On Wednesday, September 11, City Council will be meeting and Councillors Gower and Scott Moffatt have teamed up to present a Motion, “I’m moving a motion with Scott Moffatt at Council this week to authorize staff to switch the west end contract to Miller,” Councillor Gower informed Stittsville Central.
The last paragraph of the motion reads, “THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that City Council delegate authority to the General Manager of the Public Works and Environmental Services Department to finalize and execute a short-term, three-year curbside collection contract with Miller Waste Systems for Zone 1, in accordance with Section 22(1)(d) of the Procurement By-law, as described in this motion and attached Memorandum to Council.”
Gower added, “Now we’ll have to continue to hold Waste Management’s feet to the fire to ensure service improves – they still have the contract for service here until end of May 2020.”
The MWS bid was the lowest, but was higher than the April 2019 contract extension allowance passed by Council.
It may cost a little more for MWS to pick-up Stittsville’s waste, about $10, but with dependable service it will be well worth it!
A similar lack of contingency planning by Waste Management was quite evident back when their landfill on Carp road had a horrendous odour problem back when it was operational. It went on for a number of years and only really ended when the dump was closed in 2011 under provincial government order. If and when they open their new dump it could all start again. Hopefully they will be more accountable that they have been in the past. By the way it is not just Stittsville which has had poor pickup service; Kanata and West Carleton have too.
If you win a contract stating you will provide reliable service, and the service ends up not being reliable, would you not then be liable financially for breaking the terms of the contract? Could we not use that money to offset the increased cost of a new/reliable service?
A sound suggestion to us!