Secrecy about outsourced trash pick-up frustrates councillors

Two Toronto councillors on the public works committee are frustrated by the secrecy around how well a private contractor has been picking up trash between Yonge St. and the Humber River since Aug. 7.

City officials say Green For Life Environmental Corp. has improved in the past few weeks, but the number of customer complaints received isn’t being released.

“I don’t know what they’re trying to hide,” said Councillor Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina).

The public works committee, dominated by allies of Mayor Rob Ford, voted down an attempt by Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) to bring the subject up for discussion at Wednesday’s meeting.

Layton and Perks represent two of 17 wards that have been served by GFL since Aug. 7. Before, city crews picked up trash from the 165,000 households in the area, known as District 2.

Layton said he’s fielding complaints about late pickup, bins thrown on the road and smelly liquid, known as garbage juice, dripping from GFL’s bright green trucks.

Perks said a constituent complained to him Wednesday that the garbage didn’t get picked up until 1:30 a.m.

Perks complained he’s being kept in the dark and that it’s hurting his ability to do his job.

“I can’t reassure my residents that this is going to get any better than it is today. I don’t know what the city has done or intends to do to make sure that this doesn’t form a permanent pattern.”

The two councillors released their own numbers gleaned from the city’s 311 service. The list indicated 311 received almost 5,500 missed-collection complaints from District 2 between Aug. 7 and Sept. 11, more than double the number for the same period a year ago.

The numbers are totals for the period and don’t show the marked improvement that has occurred in recent weeks, said solid waste general manager Jim Harnum.

“We’re seeing the garbage is getting picked up by 6 to 6:15 every night,” Harnum said. “We’re seeing a constant decline in the number of customer service requests.”

“If we look at the last two weeks, this contractor has been performing up to reasonable standards that we would expect of our in-house staff or our District 1 contract (with a private company).”

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“We’re in week 6 now. Weeks 5 and 6 I’m more than happy with.”

Harnum said he’s not releasing numbers because he’s only required to provide an update four times a year, with the first report due between January and March of 2013.