LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Multiple Los Angeles City Council members trashed the city's new commercial wastehauling system Tuesday, publicly grilling representatives of the companies that have been contracted to operate the 6- month RecycLA program that has been rife with problems.

"I could not possibly care less how hard it is for you to make this transition. I could not possibly care less," Councilman Paul Krekorian told some service provider representatives during a meeting of the Energy, Climate Change and Environmental Justice Committee after they repeatedly said that the transition to the new program had been challenging. Before the six-hour-plus meeting, Councilmen Mitch O'Farrell and Mike Bonin held a news conference at City Hall to demand improvements to the program and shared the podium with some business and property owners who have been negatively affected by RecycLA and spoke of skyrocketing trash bills amid a plummeting quality of service.

"I was so stupefied that it was such a disastrous rollout," O'Farrell said. "I was given assurances, I can't tell you how many times I had meetings in my office, requesting assurances that this would be successful." The franchise waste hauling system was unanimously approved by the City Council in late 2016 and became operational July 1, 2017, with the goal of expanding recycling opportunities to thousands of businesses and apartment buildings while also cutting down on pollution by reducing the number of trucks on the street and requiring service providers to transition to low-emission trucks.

Seven companies handle an estimated $3.5 billion in commercial waste hauling in Los Angeles under RecycLA. Each company is assigned as the sole trash hauler for commercial sites and multi-family complexes in one or more of the city's 11 zones. Problems in the RecycLA system started shortly after it became active, including some customers reporting missed service calls and bills the doubled, tripled or quadrupled. O'Farrell said he did not think that contracts needed to be cancelled or legal action needed to be taken yet, but suggested it could soon be an option.

"I am very open to having everything on the table to look at this contract. We're not there yet, but we wanted to make a statement today that this must be fixed," O'Farrell said.

A long line of RecycLA customers told committee members horror stories of terrible service or rates that suddenly increased by hundreds or thousands of dollars.

At the end of the meeting, several pages of recommendations and requests for reports were issued by the committee that would deliver it a comprehensive analysis of the program, along with a request for advice from City Attorney Mike Feuer on legal options the city can take against companies failing the meet the requirements of their contract. According to the Bureau of Sanitation, there have been over 28,000 calls connected to missed service pickups from July 2017 through the end of January. But since each service provider has essentially been handed a monopoly, customers do not have a choice to seek out a better or cheaper service.