Publication select ▼
WEST BLOOMFIELD — Sometimes, when a company changes hands there can be a honeymoon period for the new ownership.
After purchasing waste management company GFL Environmental Inc.’s residential contracts, Priority Waste was not afforded that luxury.
According to Matt Allen, who is the company’s director of public relations and government affairs, Priority took over for 73 communities and 70,000 subscription customers in five counties across southeast Michigan July 1.
That includes West Bloomfield, and as is the case in other communities, residents have reported problems during the early stages of the transition.
West Bloomfield Township Supervisor Steven Kaplan said that on a weekly basis, Priority is obligated to remove yard waste, garbage and recycling.
About two weeks after Priority took over services from GFL, Kaplan reported that more than 1,000 residents had called the township, and he said the feedback was negative.
“Because they have not been able to fully service the township during its first two weeks at the helm,” Kaplan said. “Yard waste removal, essentially, is non-existent.”
A large part of the blame can be attributed to a lack of serviceable trucks. According to Allen, there was an expectation that about 380 trucks were going to be coming into Priority’s fleet from GFL June 30.
“Over half of that fleet was non-road-ready, was non-serviceable – would not meet MDOT minimum requirements for operation or safety,” Allen said, referring to the Michigan Department of Transportation. “Those are the facts. We had to deal with it. … We knew what we needed to do to get them fixed to be put onto the road.”
Even without that issue, Allen was not expecting a problem-free transition.
“The key part people need to understand is we told all the municipalities during the month of June, as part of the transition … that it would be about three weeks to clear away the backlog of everything that was left behind by the previous provider,” he said. “Some communities were experiencing two weeks of non-pickup, and in some areas, regretfully, they were up to five weeks. … Over half the fleet that was delivered was not serviceable. It needed to be repaired, which we have been diligently doing that – outsourcing for mechanics, fixing them … here and getting leased vehicles in here – substitution vehicles in order to bolster the operational needs to service all the communities.”
Aside from the approximately three-week time period that was anticipated to “clear the slate,” Allen anticipates another 60-90 day time period to implement Priority’s technology on the trucks.
“This was going to be a very challenging month of July under the best of circumstances, and then when the trucks were not road-ready, it exacerbated the issue,” he said. “We have cleared away a tremendous amount of backlog off the streets.”
West Bloomfield resident Marvin Herschfus has noticed a difference since Priority originally took over waste hauling services.
“They finally caught up the second week of July,” Herschfus said. “I think they’re back on track, at least picking up the garbage in my neighborhood.”
According to Kaplan, 17 trucks are needed to service West Bloomfield, and Priority now has that number.
According to him, three full-time township employees were dedicated to answering phone calls that were coming in about the issue.
However, Kaplan also acknowledged that Priority lacked a sufficient number of trucks, and his attention has been on more than just them.
“The issue was exacerbated by GFL not completing routes before they turned over the company to Priority Waste – probably half the township was unserviced,” he said. “GFL is the culprit here; they didn’t finish their work for four straight weeks. They left the condition of the homes in an abysmal state – garbage all over, yard waste. And then … the trucks that they sold to Priority Waste, 20% of them were defective.”
At a July 15 township Board of Trustees meeting, trustees unanimously approved seeking a forfeiture of a $1.5 million performance bond with GFL.
“We can seek to have that bond defaulted and the money paid by the bank to us because of the poor performance of GFL in the weeks leading up to July 1,” Kaplan said. “They had four weeks in June where their service was … sometimes non-existent, such as maybe providing a service to 50% of the residents.”
The issue could make its way into the court system, and if successful, according to Kaplan, the township is going to ask Priority Waste to credit $20 to the accounts of the approximately 20,000 households impacted by the work that was not finished by GFL.
He said that amounts to about $400,000, and the rest of the money would go for attorney fees and salary reimbursements for the three full-time township employees who spent approximately four weeks fielding calls from residents.
“The township seeks to provide a remedy to the residents,” Kaplan said. “The residents deserve much more than the service GFL provided.”
At press time, GFL had not replied to opportunities to comment.
In West Bloomfield, residents are billed directly, which Kaplan estimated to be about $260 per year.
“We are not involved in billing,” he said. “We don’t receive a percentage.”
According to an email from a township representative, residents who paid GFL in full for the year are all set until next March, and those who have set up automatic payment through a bank or credit union should be sure to cancel so that unintended payments don’t get sent to GFL.
According to Herschfus, he has had a hard time getting a hold of anybody from Priority.
“So the transition on that is still hitting a brick wall,” said Herschfus, who spoke with the Beacon approximately two weeks after the transition. “I know they’re trying to catch up, but in order to complete things, I have to make sure I’m still an active customer and I’m trying to do my due diligence, but I can’t get through to anybody. There has to be some … adjustment on the bill for the missed pickups, depending on how many people were affected.”
Allen discussed whether or not Priority intends to provide refunds or credits to residents.
“We’re not paying GFL’s bill,” he said. “We’re fixing GFL’s problem that they left behind.”
Allen also addressed wait times that people have reported when attempting to contact a Priority representative.
“I understand that in this day and age everybody wants everything within 15 minutes, so on, so forth, but when you’re dealing with 5,000 inquiries in a 10-hour day … sometimes it’s two, three, four hours before they can be answered, and sometimes the solution is already on the way, we just haven’t got to your subdivision yet or we haven’t got to your street yet,” Allen said. “So we’re dealing with the normal issues, and we’re dealing with huge backlog. So we’re doing those two things simultaneously and fixing a very broken fleet, which we inherited in the purchase.”
Kaplan pointed out that the issues early on with Priority were a tri-county predicament. However, he was not expecting long-term problems.
“We are optimistic,” Kaplan said. “We have a good relationship with (the) management of Priority Waste.”
Herschfus said that the situation was a “total mess.”
“I don’t know why it got all messed up, but in the meantime I’m holding my own and at least they started picking up the garbage on my street,” he said.
Allen shared an optimistic perspective.
“A tremendous amount of progress has been made,” he said. “So what you would normally consider to be regular service without interruptions or delays and so on, that’s coming. We hear everybody, but people need to understand that we were the solution. The problem didn’t start on July 1. The fix started on July 1, and that’s what we’ve been executing.”
For more information, visit prioritywaste.com or call (586) 228-1200.
The township can be contacted by calling (248) 451-4845.
You May Also Be Interested In
