Posted on 01/13/22
| News Source: FOX Baltimore
Across Baltimore, city recycling is piling up block after city block. “On a routine basis collections are being missed,” Councilman Yitzy Schleifer said.
Councilman Yitzy Schleifer is expressing frustration with DPW. The agency announced Wednesday that recycling collection will now only occur every other week amid a staffing shortage.
“It’s very frustrating. This is the most basic city service that is supposed to be provided and for that to be routinely missed by the agency that has the largest budget in the city is just unacceptable,” he said. The councilman says the problem has been going on for months.
“COVID-19 is the go-to excuse, but this is more than just a COVID-19 issue. This is a failure of leadership on every level at DPW,” he said. DPW Director Jason Mitchell is blaming COVID-19 among other things for driving staffing shortages within the department.
He said over the past week on average city sanitation staffing was down 227 people
“What I found out is there are a lot of people who are just out because of possible exposure,” he said.
Schleifer questions what protocol the agency is following with so many workers out on a weekly basis.
“There’s a lot of lack of clarity within the agency as to what protocols they’re following. Are they following current protocols which is a five-day quarantine or are they still following the ten-day quarantine,” he said.
A spokesperson for DPW told us last week the Omicron variant has caused a significant number of employees to be in isolation and they must be tested and receive a negative test before coming back to work.
During an emergency hearing Thursday Schleifer hopes to gain clarity.
“We want to know what is the short term and long term plan to fix this issue,” he said. “They have a broken foundation and you can’t build off of a broken foundation. I anticipate there being missed collections going forward even with this new plan.”
The changes take effect next Tuesday.