Explaining Trash
Commentary has been wanting to post the featured photo for a few years now. I guess it is now appropriate to accompany a Chron article today on City of H-Town garbage pick-up, err late pick-up. My green bin was scheduled for pick-up yesterday. You got it. It is still out there this morning.
If you look closely at the featured photo, there are three blue City of H-Town garbage trucks on my street in the Heights This was back in August of 2019, and it pretty much sums up where the city is on trash pick-up. Three garbage trucks on one street at the same time. How does that happen. This was 53 months ago, and they still don’t have garbage pick-up figured out.
See this from the Chron:
For many residents, Houston’s unreliable garbage collection is a familiar issue — and it’s one that even the city’s newly elected mayor apparently must confront.
In his inaugural address Tuesday, Mayor John Whitmire said his garbage bin had languished at the curb for a week, a common service delay in the city. Residents logged more than 29,000 complaints for missed garbage pick-ups in 2023, the highest tally in at least a decade, according to the city’s 311 data.
“We’ve got to get reliable garbage picked up. Mine’s been in front of my house for a week. I thought surely, surely,” Whitmire said. “But that’s the reality. And we live in a great city. Great cities do not have those issues.”
It appears the problem was remedied for the mayor, whose garbage bin had been pulled back from the curb by Thursday morning. His recycling container, however, was still out.
The holidays may have exacerbated the delays. Residents logged 2,800 missed garbage complaints in December, the third-highest number of the year. The complaints peaked in September, with more than 3,400 reports. The Mayor’s Office and the Solid Waste Department did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Solid Waste has long been underfunded, struggling to attract the number of drivers and maintain the number of trucks needed to reliably pick up garbage and recycling bins for its roughly 400,000 customers. Department leaders have said the department’s $100 million budget, far behind its Texas counterparts on a per household basis, is not enough to provide quality service.
Every other major Texas city charges residents a monthly garbage collection fee that provides sanitation workers with more resources. Houston does not, so Solid Waste must compete with other departments over property and sales tax dollars for funding in City Hall’s annual budget.
Former Mayor Sylvester Turner had said the city’s current system of funding was unsustainable.
Here is the entire trashy read: Houston trash pickup is often late – even for Mayor Whitmire (houstonchronicle.com).
Hope Mayor Whitmire figures this out quickly.
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It is going to be a H-Town football weekend. We have the College Football Playoff Championship game activities going on. Heck, I just may hop on the Metro rail and head to the GRB.
We also have the Texans playing in Indy Saturday evening with a playoff spot on the line. I will be wearing my battle red gear tomorrow.
Stay safe this weekend. Go Texans!
