He said he likely will leave that decision to his successor, but stopped short of guaranteeing he would not introduce a proposal before the end of his term. Turner, who opposed a fee in 2019, now says one is necessary. A similar fee in Houston would fund the department’s $89 million budget and then some, while freeing up money currently allotted to Solid Waste for other priorities. The five other large cities in Texas charge an average of $32 a month and provide more resources to their departments. He has been talking more urgently about the need for a garbage fee on residents, an idea tossed around City Hall for decades.
#Garbage truck bed drivers#
Turner has introduced cash perks for new drivers and said he will bring salary raises to council “very soon.” Mayor Sylvester Turner and newly appointed Solid Waste Director Mark Wilfalk have called the system unsustainable. It spent $6.3 million on overtime last year, $7.5 million the year before. The department is running nearly double its overtime budget for the year, and it has incurred overruns every year since 2014, often doubling or tripling the budgeted amount. Drivers often tally 60 hours a week on Houston’s streets. The maneuvering leads to extensive and almost chronic backlogs in recycling and bulk collections, and it burns out drivers, who have been required to work six-day schedules since 2018. It often has to pull employees off recycling, yard waste and heavy trash routes to pick up garbage bins, which must be collected weekly, per state law. The department’s workforce has reached its lowest point in decades, and the department rarely is able to assign drivers to all of its routes. On : Houston resorts to $3,000 signing bonuses to hire garbage truck drivers, erase collection delays The reason for the uneven service, city officials say, is Solid Waste does not have enough drivers. The Solid Waste Management Department said it checked its records and confirmed trucks had been through the neighborhood, but it would monitor the neighborhood more carefully in the future. “There's been times where we’ve gone more than a week without it getting picked up,” said Sorto, a former chair of the city’s Super Neighborhood Alliance.
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