St. Louis’ refuse chief to aldermen: Proposed budget won’t pick up the trash (2024)

ST. LOUIS — The city trash commissioner on Wednesday told aldermen the budget they are considering won’t pay for enough truck drivers to pick up all the trash.

Refuse Commissioner Randy Breitenfeld said in budget hearings that next year’s spending plan includes nine fewer trash truck drivers than the city needs.

“I would not be able to cover all my routes,” Breitenfeld said.

The statement set off alarms among aldermen. Trash pickup is one of the city’s bread-and-butter functions, and aldermen have been getting an earful from constituents in the last few years as a short-staffed refuse department has struggled to maintain consistent service.

But until Wednesday, the problem had largely been hiring, not budgeting.

Alderwoman Cara Spencer, who chairs the board’s budget committee, was appalled.

“That is a pretty big omission,” said Spencer, who represents downtown, Soulard, and the near southeast side.

Aldermanic President Megan Green, who as a member of the city's Estimate Board gave the city's entire $1.3 billion budget initial approval last month, said in an interview that the part Breitenfeld objects to should probably change.

“We should be aspiring to have the workforce to pick up every single route every single day,” she said.

Comptroller Darlene Green, another Estimate Board member, said in an emailed statement that it is important to her that the refuse department has sufficient staff, and that she will support budget requests for sufficient staff.

But Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson to Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, who also gave initial approval to the budget, said he talked to Streets Department Director Betherny Williams on Wednesday.

And Williams, who oversees the refuse division, assured him that the new budget would have enough drivers to cover all of the routes, even if it would be a little tight: The division will have to continue picking up seven days per week instead of the traditional four.

“We are in a much better place,” he said.

Breitenfeld described things differently in Wednesday’s committee hearing.

The division, he said, has been working at full-tilt since the pandemic, when staffing got squeezed by a hiring freeze and people leaving for better-paying jobs in the private sector.

They’ve been working an expanded, seven-day schedule since at least the summer of 2022, when they restarted recycling pickup and the system collapsed.

And overtime has gone through the roof, jumping 80% from fiscal year 2018 to 2022, according to budget documents. He's worried about burnout.

Breitenfeld acknowledged that vacancies remain — there are 52 positions filled out of 66 budgeted for the current year — and said that’s probably why some of the positions were cut.

The city is trying to be conservative heading into the next fiscal year: Officials are concerned about losing $26 million in income taxes amid challenges from the state and various lawsuits.

It’s also not easy to hire. The city doesn’t pay as much as private trash haulers. Some applicants can’t pass federally mandated drug tests or don’t show up to interviews.

But he said he had hoped this would be the year he got the division back to some semblance of normalcy. The city has raised salaries for its trash truck drivers, and some of those who left have started coming back.

He said he’d need more than just the 57 positions in the proposed budget for next year, though. The division, he said, has 55 routes to cover every day, and an average of 10 people out each day for medical leave, sick leave or some other reason.

“I have to have some fluff in there,” he said.

Aldermen will be reviewing the budgets of all city departments over the next few weeks, and they can propose additions to the Estimate Board, which is composed of the mayor, comptroller and aldermanic president.

The budget must be finally approved by June 30.