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Baltimore is on track to meet Mayor Brandon Scott’s pledge to reinstate weekly recycling pickup by early 2024, public works officials said in a marathon hearing Wednesday night, but they stressed that restoring service will depend on reinforcements arriving on time.
The Department of Public Works’ scaled-back recycling service has been a subject of persistent frustration for some City Council members since the start of the pandemic, so much so that the council held officials in their chambers for six hours during the agency’s budget hearing a year ago to push for reinstating pickup on a weekly basis.
Scott responded during his state of the city speech in April by setting a deadline to restore the service by the first quarter of next year, a target Deputy Director Richard Luna said Wednesday the agency should reach as long as it can get a total of 20 new crews and 30 garbage trucks in place.
Wednesday’s over five-hour public works hearing was only slightly shorter than the agency’s lengthy budget hearing a year ago. For the first time this year, council members have the power not only to cut money from Mayor Brandon Scott’s proposed budget, but to reallocate funds in the $4.4 billion spending plan. City leaders have until June 26 to approve a final budget.
More coverage on the Department of Public Works
Weekly recycling by early 2024?
Though the bulk of Wednesday’s hearing probed other topics, among them plans to expand the city’s landfill and the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent order to finish two long-delayed water reservoir projects, friction between the council and Department of Public Works largely centered around the efforts to reinstate weekly recycling pickup.
Under the current budget plan, the department expects an initial boost of 10 new recycling crews to “stabilize” the service at a biweekly level, cutting out overtime work and contractor support, Luna explained. To reinstate recycling pickup every week, the department needs another 10 crews as well as 30 new trucks, expected to arrive in early 2024. To add the crews, the agency is relying on a mix of new general fund dollars and a portion of the $15 million it’s set to receive from the city’s federal pandemic aid.
Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, the council’s most outspoken critic of reduced recycling services, pressed the agency to set a more specific date for the return to weekly pickup, and questioned how much money the agency has saved over the last year by operating the service at a more limited capacity.
“There are no savings. Actually, there’s additional costs, because our overtime costs went up because there’s four times the work,” responded Director Jason Mitchell, who maintained that his employees are already working long, grueling shifts to collect recycling every other week. “Our fatigue costs went up because our employees are working 12-hour shifts, lifting garbage up all day and all night. It’s unacceptable.”
The mayor’s commitment to restore weekly recycling by early 2024 followed a Department of Public Works report that estimated it could take up to three years to resolve severe staffing shortages, optimize its collection routes, acquire needed vehicles and make software upgrades to get citywide service back on track.
Schleifer and public works officials on Wednesday parsed the unintended consequences of rolling out close to 170,000 larger, blue recycling bins around town in 2021, which agency leaders say contributed to more work for their strapped crews. Overall recycling volumes in the city have tripled since 2010, officials said, even as staffing has held basically constant. Schleifer, meanwhile, contended that the city’s overall recycling volumes have fallen in recent years, citing data he said he received from the department.
Mitchell conceded that the department should have done more homework before adopting the plan for the larger recycling bins, a decision that predated his time in the city.
The Northwest Baltimore councilman, who said he warned the director about the consequences of rolling out the larger bins, questioned Mitchell on whether he now sees the move as a mistake. Mitchell replied that he does not, and stressed that he didn’t have a choice about whether to move forward with the plan, because the agency was contractually obligated to distribute the new bins.
Worker shortages and uncertain leadership
Though discussed only briefly at Wednesday’s wide-ranging hearing, debates over the future of managing trash and recycling in Baltimore come as Mitchell is set to step down in just a month.
Following criticism from the council at the start of this year, Mitchell announced his plans to resign this spring, citing health and family reasons. He later extended his exit date to the end of June, but the Scott administration has yet to find a long-term replacement, City Administrator Faith Leach told council members this week. The city is bringing on a recruitment firm to conduct a national search and has an interim director lined up to replace Mitchell.
After Mitchell’s resignation announcement in January, Councilman Antonio Glover was one of several members to plead with the director to stay. A former DPW employee, Glover renewed that appeal Wednesday, saying he has seen improvements in the agency and a boosted morale under Mitchell.
“I want to say to you: We appreciate you. We want you to stay,” he said. “So think twice about leaving in June.”
In addition to uncertainty at the top of the agency, the Department of Public Works has also been managing widespread vacancies among its sprawling staff, a problem exacerbated in the pandemic. In recent months public works has reported close to 700 open positions, for a vacancy rate of 25%.
But Luna noted Wednesday some silver linings in the agency’s depleted ranks. The Bureau of Solid Waste has cut its vacancy rate from close to 15% when he arrived to 9% today, Luna said.
The Bureau of Water and Wastewater, on the other hand, currently has 534 unfilled positions, for a vacancy rate of 28%. The agency is actively recruiting for more than half of those jobs, Luna said.
adam.willis@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Adam Willis covers city government for The Banner, including the impacts of the large COVID-19 stimulus package that Baltimore received from the federal government.
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