MORGANTOWN — Representatives from Republic Services are giving explanations for concerns over services at the City of Morgantown.
During Morgantown City Council’s regular meeting Tuesday, the General Manager and Operations Manger for the Northern West Virginia branch of Republic Services spoke about recent complaints made by council and by city residents. In the public hearing portion of the meeting, General Manager Tom Beary acknowledged the lapse in services by Republic and the need to work on little things such as the timing of trash services and communication
“We’re not trying to make excuses for not picking up the trash it should be as simple as that,” said Berry during the meeting. “All we need is drivers in the driver seat of trucks and picking up the trash and it should be as simple as that but unfortunately, those difficulties do happen,” he said.
While Beary acknowledge the lapse in services, he also stated there were also unfortunately timed events that affected Republic Services especially in regards to manpower. According to Berry, a COVID-19 outbreak affected close to twenty percent of their workforce at the Northern West Virginia hauling facility, which in turn deeply affected services during the latter part of 2020. As a result, Berry stated several changes were made so that a major stoppage in service wouldn’t happen again.
“We did make changes to the operations,” he explained. “We pretty much redesigned the entire outfit to eliminating all of the social distancing, nobody’s in buildings, staffing is back up, all of the staff is back to normal,” he said.
Even though COVID-19 made it’s all to familiar impact on Republic Services, other concerns regarding communication issues and the execution of planned routes were brought up by council. The complaints ranged from the lack of response to concerned areas, late pick-ups or just missed locations entirely. According to Republic Services Operations Manager Cassandra Mercer, these are a result of technology issues at their facilites, who then elaborated on the recent improvements made at Republic Services operations center.
“Fortunately we have a new dispatching software so we can actually see where the routes are, as far as the maps go, things like that,” said Mercer. “We’re trying to become more process reliant instead of people reliant,” she said.
As of now, no publicly acknowledged fines were implemented by the City of Morgantown with members of council giving thanks for them willing to speak in a public setting voluntarily. For Republic Services, the goal now is continue building on the improvements made, both in personel and technology aspects and gain trust moving forward. As for Morgantown residents, Republic Services is encouraging more feedback going forward so they can keep improving the services they provide to the city.
“There’s no feedback that’s too small or too minute,” said Beary. “Even as small as the drivers leaving our lid open and they’re preferred closed or one way or another, these are things we can adapt to,” he said.