PHOENIX — They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but no one is looking for treasures in a Sunnyslope neighborhood riddled with bulk trash.
Piles of tree branches, old couches, and other unknown items have sat and grown near 12th Street and Hatcher Road, Faith Garber said.
“It’s not our treasure,” she said. “No one is looking or picking it up.”
Garber is one of several neighbors who are tired of seeing the once-valuable items on their sidewalks, slowly growing from block to block.
The problem is not new. The city has experienced delays in pick-ups since August because of a shortage of qualified drivers and a 30% increase in bulk trash this time last year, said Phoenix Public Works Director Joe Giudice.
“It’s more material to pick up, takes us longer to get to it all and those factors together are why we are now a week behind schedule,” Giudice said.
When the problem started the city had 65 driver positions open, after increasing pay by $3 an hour in November and adding other incentives, they saw more people applying and added the department now has about 40 open positions, he said.
“It is possible that we missed some area through the hectic craze of catching up,” he added.
The city is hoping that updating the pick-up schedule and a “typical showdown this time of the year during the holidays” will help them catch up.
“We apologize that we’re in this situation, but we’re going to get this rectified,” Giudice said. “It’ll be picked up for sure by Saturday. We’ll have people working overtime to make sure anything we didn’t get by Friday gets taken care of by Saturday.”
“We’ll seeing is believing, so, we’ll see. We’d love to see it happen,” Garber said.
Anyone who has questions or concerns about trash in their neighborhood can contact public works at 602-262-6251.
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