THUNDER BAY — A member of Thunder Bay city council wants to know why a two-year-old plan to remove one vehicle from the city's fleet of garbage trucks is taking so long to implement.
One of the nine trucks was initially scheduled to be pulled off the road in July 2017 in conjunction with reducing the amount of garbage each household could leave at curbside from three containers to two.
Taking one vehicle, and one crew, out of service was projected to save the city $150,000 a year.
So far, however, the city has only managed to park the truck for one day out of the four days each week that it collects garbage.
Solid Waste and Recycling Services manager Jason Sherband, in an emailed statement to Tbnewswatch, said "As always, we continue to seek efficiencies within our operations."
Sherband said the system introduced in mid-2017 "is working, we have seen a spike in recycling and decrease in the amount of garbage collected" since it was put in place.
Tbnewswatch requested information about how much less waste is going to the landfill site as a result of the lower curbside limit.
According to Sherband, "our trucks brought in 230 less loads of garbage to the landfill site between 2016 and 2017."
Councillor Rebecca Johnson expressed frustration Wednesday over the implementation process, saying she plans to raise the issue again during council's budget deliberations, something she also did during budget talks a year ago.
"That, to me, is one thing that we should have reduced in our budget by now...I know they are working on it. but what does that really mean?... I want a specific answer," Johnson told Tbnewswatch.
She noted that the original plan included removing two full-time positions from the payroll, but she has yet to see that reflected in the budget.
"That's two years in a row that this has not been addressed, and I need to know the answer as to why...and when it is going to be done."
A year ago, Manager of Infrastructure and Operations Kerri Marshall told council the fleet reduction was taking longer than expected, and the city has "not filled or replaced through attrition two full-time positions within that area, so the staff is being filled through relief patrol staff."
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents city workers, unsuccessfully lobbied council in 2017 to maintain existing service levels.
After the subsequent implementation of changes led to delays in curbside collection that July, city officials rescinded the fleet reduction, with Sherband saying it would now be implemented "gradually."
He said the city had had "productive and positive meetings" with CUPE officials about transitioning to a reduced fleet over an unspecified period of time.
