Phoenix’s rapid growth will likely change your trash, recyclables, and greens collection days by October.
In recent testimony before the Phoenix City Council’s Community and Culture Investment Subcommittee, Deputy Director of Public Works Felipe Moreno said the citywide redirection would affect 80% of the 413,000 households. of the city who depend on its services. Quarterly bulk garbage and hazardous materials collection days will not change.
With about 270 equipment operators working in the four general collection areas the city is divided into, Moreno says his teams face an increasingly difficult task as Phoenix has added 27,000 customers over the past 10 years. .
“Why redirect? Honestly, it really comes down to growth and increased customer demand,” Moreno said, noting that the last time the city revised its collection routes was in 2009 and “since then, we had 13 years of customer growth”.
“Basically with all of this,” he continued, “we need to reroute the city to optimize our routes and increase our capacity to meet increased demand. The benefits we seek here are redistributed workloads.
“So we really want to make sure that we create flexibility and how we assign our routes in our day-to-day work to be able to manage the day and get our drivers to come in at a reasonable time.”
Moreno said he also wanted to “reduce miles through operational efficiency – reducing miles to the transfer station and into neighborhoods” because “it’s always a goal to optimize those routes.”
Moreno said his department’s customer service “continues to be at a high level.”
“With our residents, we often hear that they set their watch to the time when the driver comes to their house,” he boasted. “So we want to continue to make sure that we can be dependable and dependable in delivering that service – and then make sure the staffing and equipment resources match the demand for the service.”
Moreno said the rerouting will not only absorb the growth in the number of customers, but also respond to the new growth expected over the next two years.
“So that allows us to be more nimble and absorb the growth that we see coming through our continued homes growing in the north and southwest,” he said.
However, the city will not impose the new collection days on households.
Deputy Director of Public Works Lorizelda Stoeller said that with 80 per cent of customers in the department “having a new day when their truck runs in their street drive, it will be important for us to make sure we engage our community. and making sure they understand their new day of service.”
She said messaging in English and Spanish “will provide one-on-one notifications to residents with special collections.” Special collections are residents who have several collection days.
“We have about 10,000 customers who have different collection days,” she said, noting that one day could be for garbage collection and another for recyclables.
She said that for those households, “we will personally contact those customers who knock on their door through our specialists in the field. They will arrange dedicated guided tours for those customers.”
“We also plan to provide multiple modes of communication, such as leaving door hangers, social media posts, newsletter updates, municipal utility bills, updates and updates to our website,” Stoeller said.
Stoeller said the department is currently remapping routes across the city and hopes to present a final plan to city council when it returns in August from its summer vacation.
“Then on September 5, we’ll do a mass mailing to those 80% of customers,” she continued. “It will likely be a postcard of some kind advertising this as your new day of duty beginning the week of October 3.”
“We understand there will be a transition,” she added. “Some customers may not have received the notice and weren’t home when we knocked on their door. We anticipate that we will have to offer courtesy collections. We are prepared to do this for up to two or three months, if necessary, to ensure that our customers understand their new collection day.