Frustrations mount as trash pickup problems persist in Leawood

Some Leawood residents are still are seeing trash, recyclables and yard waste sitting on the curb longer than they used to. Occasionally some residents are not receiving their scheduled trash or yard-waste collection at all.

Following months of complaints about missed pickups, City Administrator Scott Lambers this week expressed his lack of confidence in WCA Waste Corp. by reducing the length of the permit that allows the company to operate within the city.

“Trash and recyclables are health hazards if they’re not picked up,” Lambers told company representatives at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “You’re heading into a heavy season and you can’t keep up with what you’ve got now. I am very cynical that you’re going to be able to make it.”

Waste permits are typically awarded annually, but the city administrator has the ability to re-evaluate those that fail to meet requirements.

“I will be suspending the one-year permit and reinstating a six-month permit hopefully to get your corporate headquarters’ attention that what’s going on now is not acceptable,” Lambers said.

The decision came after WCA representatives Tom Coffman and Bob Mathis appeared before the council to apologize and offer explanations for the late and continued service misses.

A WCA representative was originally scheduled to address the problems with trash service at last month’s council meeting, but a scheduling problem by WCA caused the employee to appear at a homeowners’ association meeting in Leawood instead.

Houston-based WCA acquired Town & Country Waste Disposal in October 2015. With that acquisition came problems mainly caused by a shortage of quality staff. The U.S. Department of Transportation gave WCA several months to get all of its commercial drivers certified. Many of those drivers either failed or refused to take a drug test, while others weren’t physically fit or had problematic driving records.

“We lost 53 percent of our drivers within the first two months,” Mathis said.

The loss of drivers was further exacerbated by a nationwide shortage in commercial drivers. Coffman admitted they had been playing catch-up with their staffing, but felt aggressive recruitment efforts, enhanced compensation packages and additional training were getting workers in the door and ensuring routes were covered. Fifteen new drivers were hired in the last month, Coffman said.

Councilman Andrew Osman pointed out that contacting customer service representatives was another issue WCA needed to fix.

“The issue to place a phone call for both companies since the merger has been problematic,” Osman said. “I used to be able to make a phone call here locally and now those call centers are out of state. They don’t have the resources or knowledge to put boots on the ground and understand exactly what’s going on.”

Mathis clarified that because of the large volume of calls, some will roll over to the nearest call center located in Springfield, Mo.

“They are fielding between 800 to 1,000 calls a day all over Missouri and Kansas,” Mathis said. “We have a staff of eight. You do the math. They are extremely busy.”

Help by e-mail is also available for residents. Those e-mail inquiries are answered within 24 hours.

Mayor Peggy Dunn’s neighborhood, Oxford Hills, is one of the areas tthat has gone a pickup. Mathis said the week of missed service was unusual.

“We want to service every customer we have at least once a week,” he said.

Similar trash and waste removal woes have been experienced on both sides of the state line by customers of WCA and rival Deffenbaugh Industries, which was acquired by Waste Management Inc.

WCA reached out to the Urban League of Greater Kansas City to work together to recruit more workers. The company will participate in the upcoming Urban Neighborhood Initiative and Urban League of Kansas City Hiring Fair, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 20 at St. James United Methodist Church at 56th Street and the Paseo in Kansas City.

This story was originally published September 8, 2016 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Frustrations mount as trash pickup problems persist in Leawood."