Polk Commissioners voice satisfaction with improvement shown by FCC Environmental
The Polk County Commission is not kicking its trash hauler to the curb.
After putting FCC Environmental on a 30-day notice for failing to collect garbage from county households on schedule — warning them to improve or lose the job — the commission on Tuesday voiced satisfaction with the company’s progress over the past month.
“You’ve got my garbage two weeks in a row and I’m real happy about that,” Commissioner Bill Braswell told representatives with the company. “Your collection methods are working as opposed to what they were. … You’re working in the right direction.”
Since the county threatened to terminate the contract, FCC has added four trucks to its fleet via a third-party subcontractor and started collecting on Saturdays. Jim Suter, the company’s general manager, told commissioners that complaints from residents to the county about missed collections have decreased 61 percent since Jan. 8.
“We at FCC have dug in,” Suter said. “We’ve worked hard to build and energize our team, we’ve added consistency, recovering faster when our customers do experience delays.”
“Have we done better in the past four weeks? Yes,” he added. “Can we do even better? Yes.”
Previously: Officials to contracted waste hauler: Shape up in 30 days or lose the job
Early progress made: Is Polk County trash hauler doing better? Complaints down since ultimatum was issued
Polk is going to keep the pressure on the company
The county is going to keep the pressure on the company, which is under contract through 2024. Commissioners said they want representatives with FCC to send staff monthly updates about its staffing levels, collection data and complaint numbers.
In July, the county received 1,248 complaints from residents about missed collections, prompting months of public criticism from commissioners.
“This has been a bumpy road,” Commissioner Rick Wilson told FCC representatives during the meeting Tuesday. “I commend you for what you’ve done but this should have been done quite a while back. You’re under a microscope. We are going to be looking and listening. Keep doing better.”
In 2017, the county inked contracts with two Texas-based companies to handle residential trash pick-up through 2024. Waste Management was tabbed to perform the task on the east side; FCC was hired to service the west side.
Both contracts cost the county a total of $21.2 million per year. Waste Management, meanwhile, has not been under scrutiny for its performance.
In recent meetings, commissioners have taken issue with FCC’s operations, with some saying that the company hasn’t delivered on promises made to the county after the contract was signed..
The timing of the dispute has also been a point of discussion. As complaints about missed pick-ups mounted, the commission, in October, voted to increase what residents pay for the service.
Expressing an interest in firing the company, Commissioner Neil Combee told The Ledger in November that residents “deserve better” and “deserve to get the service they pay for.”
In the contract dispute, County Attorney Randy Mink sent a letter to the company saying they are in “material default” on its end of the agreement.
FCC’s Chief Executive Officer Inigo Sanz responded with a letter of his own, saying the county “has no evidence” to support that claim.
Mink nor County Manager Bill Beasley have explained publicly what it would cost the county if it terminated the agreement with the company. Asked about that at the Jan. 18 meeting, Beasley said he was still looking into it.
“We are working at this behind the scenes, but we really haven’t crystallized at this point what that will actually look like or what strategies we will propose to the board, he said. “But they have to center around augmenting the services.”
Did you know? Polk County Utilities reports two wastewater spills. The first was a 376,000-gallon spill.
Beasley told the commission at that time that it may be difficult for the county to find another company willing to take on FCC’s scope of work.
FCC’s service area includes 78,356 homes.
On Tuesday, Commissioner George Lindsey told the company that there’s still room for improvement.
“Yes there’s been progress, there’s been effort in the right direction, let’s not assume that we are there yet,” he said. “We’ve got to keep that pressure on for the next 30 days. The calls are less, but yet there are still too many.”
A South Carolina native, Dustin covers Polk County government and county-wide issues. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @LLDustin_Wyatt.
