Waste Management responds to Telegraph trash allegations, says no contact was ever made by businesses
Submitted by Kelsey Penrose on Fri, 01/04/2019 - 5:36pm
It was alleged today that Carson City's Waste Management has policies that are causing a trash build-up on Telegraph Square, but Waste Management Representative Kendra Kostelecky says that simply is not the case.
"For commercial businesses, we will come and take your trash every day of the week if that’s what you want,” said Kostelecky. “And we absolutely will provide businesses with as many bins as they want. We’re a business, we don’t have any policy that states we would only provide one bin to restaurants. In fact, we have many businesses that we do pick-ups for multiple times a week.”
To read the original story, click here.
The miscommunication could come from a zoning issue or a landlord. Similar to Homeowners Associations (HOAs) that state if you leave your bins out past a certain period of time you can get fined, it could be that zoning does not allow for bins to be left in areas outside of designated zones, limiting the amount of total bins the buildings in the district could have.
A representative conducted a site visit in Telegraph Square Friday afternoon to address concerns of business owners to see what could be done, whether that would mean finding an alternative spot for bin storage, putting in a dumpster, or simply providing more bins, which would be the easiest method.
It was discovered during this site visit that many of the businesses actually do have more than one bin at their disposal. According to Kostelecky, however, some of the people they spoke to had no idea they could order services more than once a week.
In fact, Kostelecky said, according to the records Waste Management has on file, not one of the Telegraph Square businesses contacted Waste Management asking for additional services or bins.
“We’re not sure where this miscommunication is coming from, if the businesses possibly spoke to a landlord who misinformed them they could only have one bin, but we have no policy in place in the way they described,” said Kostelecky.
In cases such as these, if Waste Management is contacted, they send a representative out to do a site visit, which is exactly what transpired this afternoon.
Some of the issues that businesses could face in receiving additional bins is that in older buildings, there weren’t garbage areas set aside in plans like they are in newer plans, such as the new commercial-residential complex on Curry Street that was built with a disposal area in mind.
"We want to make it clear that we at Waste Management will work with any business to determine what services are best for them, whether it be providing additional pick-up services or providing additional bins or dumpsters," said Kostelecky.
Waste Management also has a new local service telephone number that both residential and commercial customers can call at (775) 343-7596.
In addition, Kostelecky said, if anyone needs to add multiple services per week, they may be happy with the new prices that the Carson City Board of Supervisors negotiated with Waste Management to lower costs for both commercial and residential, which will be coming soon to customers.
