Annual POA meeting, Part 2: New trash vendor complaints

Following up on this introductory post, I'm going to re-cap more of the content from the other night's POA meeting.  Recall as I said previously that this blog does not represent the positions of Centerpointe POA.  I'm an independent blogger who lives in the subdivision. 

Numerous residents voiced opinions about the new trash vendor recently contracted by League City.  Those opinions included, but were not necessarily limited to, the following:

(1) The workers were alleged to be sloppy.  One woman complained about her trash can being left a considerable distance out in the roadway instead of right at the curb, at the foot of the driveway, or in the hell strip. 

Is it too much to ask for that the cans and recycle boxes be placed neatly in an upright position instead of being scattered about?  It's bad enough that we now have to look at the containers three days a week instead of two, as was the case previously.  Can we not at least minimize the trashy appearance? 

Your blogger (who self-identified during the meeting, by the way) voiced the opinion that the workers do not always pick up stray pieces of trash that get loose during the loading process.  I had previously snapped a few pics to illustrate this point, but hadn't gotten around to publishing them, so here they are now. 

Yum!!  This sub-headline reads:
TV Dinner Makes Encore Appearance on Front Lawn.

One of my neighbors likes snacking on Pringles, apparently.  You have no secrets here - wwwwah hah hah hah hah!!

This kind of general neatness may seem like a minor thing, but here's what happens.  My dog, like all proud members of her species, passionately believes in eating first and asking questions later.  So if she comes across a nice stinky piece of plastic trash on the ground, she will gobble it up gleefully and without a second thought. 

And then the next thing I'll see is her scraping her anus across the ground, and I'm wondering if she'll be able to pass that piece of plastic, or will I need to incur a very large veterinarian bill to get it dealt with. 

(2)  The trucks were observed to come at unpredictable times, sometimes very late in the day.  Several attendees made this observation and noted that they missed having Ameriwaste pick up trash early in the day so that it is promptly over and done with.  They noted that Ameriwaste was very consistent in this regard. 

Having attended one of the trash-related City Council meetings, I remember clearly that one of Republic Waste's service superiority arguments was that they would not do collection on Saturdays (as Ameriwaste did) because of the safety factor with children expected to be outside at that time.  Well, guess what??  I've instead seen the trucks in Section 9 when the elementary school bus is off-loading in the afternoon.  So we've gone from having trash trucks cruising around when children might be outside to having them cruise around when young children are guaranteed to be outside.  Fabulouso. 

(3) The vendor was alleged to be noncommunicative and unhelpful, with service plans not specified.  One man questioned whether they would issue their own trash cans, the kind suitable for use with the automatic dumpers.  He wanted to know the answer because he wasn't sure whether he should invest in a new can for himself. 

When I published this post a few days ago, I was assuming that these kinds of cans would not be issued - because nothing that I know of has been said to that effect.

But another man noted that he had seen the vendor using automated trucks and vendor-issued cans in another subdivision - if memory serves me, I think he cited Countryside. 

I haven't confirmed any of this, but it's a good question: are we going to be issued cans?  Have other subdivisions been issued cans?  If so, how were those decisions made as to who got cans and who did not? 

(4) Alleged intentional non-collection.  One man described chasing down a trash crew after they failed to dispose of all of his trash.  Reportedly, the crew then explained to him that there were some items which they had been instructed not to pick up from homeowners.  It was noted that no such conflicts were known to have occurred with Ameriwaste. 

Given the chorus of complaints expressed in that meeting, the POA stated that they intend to take up these vendor issues with League City directly, so stay tuned for further developments.