Yard Waste collection

In late August 2021, there was a series of storms that took out power and downed many trees in the Glendale area. This resurfaced the concerns of some of my constituents about our yard waste collection service that is done by Green For Life (GFL) contracted by Glendale with your tax dollars.

In general, under normal situations, the service we provide to our residents is rightly focused on the maintenance of one’s yard, not tree removal or larger landscaping work.  This includes three cubic yards of waste per two week period per property.  Yet, when a storm comes though like that one, accommodations are needed to support additional clean-up as exceptions.  That said, I do not feel a full tree falling on private property should be the City’s responsibility to remove as that will greatly increase our costs and unfairly pass costs of homeowners onto renters, etc.  It does raise a question.

What is the proper level of accommodation for storms? 

I learned during our council meeting that we as a City have one chipper and two public works staff who are trained/approved to use it, so the City’s own resources to help are very limited.  They do have to take care of all the city right of ways already. The City contracts out all ‘forester’ services, which is limited to tree inventory, hazard review, etc. at rates between $65 and $115 per hour for three named contractors plus vehicle rates at $45 / day.  Those foresters are training our public works staff, but are not contracted to do City wide clean up.  In short, we are in no position today to take on the work we contract to GFL or professional tree services contracted by residents. 

For comparison, I was informed that Whitefish Bay, who does provide these services in house, has a number of full time public works staff members focused just on this, not to mention specialized equipment to do so, which comes at great cost.  What our staff did do is go out that very night of the storm and start clearing trees down on the City’s public property, right of ways, and streets. 

What GFL did to accommodate after the storm was increase pick up from 3 cubic yards to 4 cubic yards, 33% more than usual, which was not in our contract. That was done in good faith, and I appreciated their accommodation.  Would it have been preferred for them to wave the bundling requirement as well, well yes, though the City has no authority to force this.  The contract it up again in 2025, when perhaps we can. We do not know why Advanced Disposal (prior to GFL) started enforcing the terms about half-way through the contract.  What we do know is that the contract does not change when Advanced was acquired by GFL; there is no clause to renegotiate.  We also know municipalities who have tried to adjust or get out of their GLF contracts did not end well.  I think our goal should be to renegotiate terms with GLF (or preferably another vendor) at renewal to ensure that we do have some level of storm accommodation included triggered by specific terms such as sustained wind speeds, tornado touch down, etc. that will trigger more pickup and reduced constraints (no bundling needed) for our residents. 

 Comparison to neighboring communities

Looking around at other close municipalities, the same rules are in place in Brown Deer who also contracts with GFL.  Bayside only collects ½ as often though allows for no bundling, yet if you put out too much they will charge you extra.  Fox Point only collects in the fall though as far as I can tell from their website has no volume limit or bundling.  Shorewood comes out monthly though charges you extra if it takes longer than 15 minutes, but no bundling required.  Whitefish Bay comes out weekly, has a larger collection allowance though will still charge you extra if too much, no bunding requirement.  Milwaukee has smaller collection allowance (2 cubic yards versus 3) and requires special pickup requests, though also allows no bundling.  

So in comparison, most communities also have limits on collection, and some also require bundling.  Glendale’s service seems comparable.

 What can we do now?

Staff is exploring the cost of bringing Yard Waste services in house, both labor and equipment, so at least we know that come contract renegotiation time.  Perhaps the bundling requirement can also be removed at that time; I think it could be reclassified like Whitefish Bay does between ‘chipping’ and ‘yard waste’.  We explored if Whitefish Bay would be willing to contract with the City of Glendale to provide us services; they were not.  Perhaps there are policies we could add where the City’s limited staff gets involved in private clean-up, yet not skirt the responsibilities of GFL. 

More immediate, I think in these situations we can try to come together as a community to help each other out.  My neighbor and I share a chain saw, and I cut down one of his fallen branches as he was out of town and I was doing some clean up myself.  As the scouts say, many hands make light work!