P.J. president: ‘Things haven’t changed’

Frustration with the solid waste collection service being provided by Progressive Waste Solutions was more than evident during Tuesday night’s meeting of the Acadia Parish Police Jury.
“This was talked about some in committee last week,” said Police Jury President David Savoy, who amended Tuesday night’s agenda to allow for the discussion. “But things haven’t changed ... not one bit.”
Jamarick “Jay” Sonnier, regional manager, and Robert Buckner, operations manager for Progressive, were at last week’s Solid Waste Committee meeting and seemingly consoled jurors at the time with promises that personnel problems were being addressed and that collection routes would be completed.
No one from Progressive was present for the full jury meeting Tuesday night.
“They missed all of Estherwood — again,” said Donna Bertrand, human resources director for the jury and a member of the Estherwood board of aldermen. “They missed it last week and they missed it again this week. That’s two weeks that people’s garbage has been sitting in their cans.”
“There’s a big demand out there that we need to pursue the fines,” Savoy added, referring to the $250 assessment that is written into the contract.
Savoy explained that, by contract, Progressive can be assessed $250 per unit per day per incident. An incident is defined as failure to address a missed pick-up after 24 hours.
The parish has attempted to fine the company before — a total of $25,000 — to no avail. To date, the parish has not collected one penny of the $25,000 fine.
“They said they wanted proof that a complaint was made,” said Bertrand.
She said a system was implemented whereby complaints were recorded and faxed to both Progressive and to the landfill office. It wasn’t long, she said, before she had a large box full of complaints.
“So we gave them proof of the complaints then they came in here and told us, ‘You need to prove to us that the cans were outside when we passed.’
“I don’t think it’s anywhere in the contract that we have to prove the cans were out there.”
Referring back to the faxed complaints, Bertrand said, “I’d get the faxes back saying the residence had been picked up.
“So, one time I called a couple of the residents back and asked if their trash had, indeed, been collected. It had not.”
An apparently agitated Robert Hebert, parish solid waste supervisor, said there was an occasion where a parish resident called day after day complaining that her garbage had not been picked up.
“I finally drove out to her house and emptied her can in the back of my truck,” Hebert said. “When I got back to the office, we got a fax from (Progressive) and written on the bottom was, ‘Serviced at 9 a.m.’
“I wrote, ‘Nice try. I just picked it up myself,’ and faxed it back.”
“At what point is this breach of contract,” asked juror Charles “Chuck” Broussard.
Attorney Brad Andrus urged restraint.
“I need to review the contract,” he said. “I don’t want to guess on this, but it’s not as complicated as it sounds. They should just pay the fine.”
On Andrus’ recommendation, Secretary-Treasurer Laura Faul was instructed to send Progressive a registered letter (return receipt requested) informing them of the jury’s position. With that letter should be an invoice for the missed pick-ups along with the records of calls.
The parish’s contract with Progressive Waste Solutions expired in March, 2018.