Bulky-trash program is a mess, audit finds

The city’s bulky-item pickup program is badly in need of an overhaul, according to a scathing report issued Monday by city Auditor Edwin Young.

The program is plagued by untimely pickup service caused largely by excessive sick leave, overtime and leave without pay by employees from the Department of Environmental Services’ Refuse Collection Branch.

“Staffing shortages and outdated union memoranda of agreements contributed to the untimely collections and excessive overtime,” Young said in his letter accompanying his report to the City Council. More than one-third of the complaints about bulky-item pickup were about missed or late pickups.

Between July 2015 and July 2016, 102 of 122 employees who worked in the manual pickup crew took 17,815 hours, or 2,227 days, of sick leave, the audit said. During the same period, 153 employees were paid $1.7 million in overtime for bulky and white goods (large metal appliances) collection, an average of $11,056 per employee.

Additionally, between July 2015 and April 2017, 21 employees took over 3,900 hours of leave without pay because they ran out of paid leave.

“Even if every scheduled manual employee reported to work on a given day, there are not enough employees to fill all of the manual route crews, including bulky item collection crews at the collection yards,” the audit said. Despite this, vacant positions have gone unfilled, the report said.

The audit also found abuse by Oahu residents, who use the bulky-item collection service to dispose of nonbulky refuse and are not complying with service rules. Items that should have gone into gray, blue and green bins are instead being set out with bulky items, the report said.

The department’s enforcement program lacks adequate staffing, and inspectors are constantly addressing complaints but have neither the time nor resources to oversee or check for violations throughout Oahu, the report said.

Among the auditor’s recommendations are to crack down on sick-leave abuse, reduce overtime by maximizing the number of bulky and white-goods items completed on regular time, and negotiate updated agreements with the United Public Workers union. The current agreement defines two full loads as equal to a full, eight-hour workday, and employees receiving any loads after that are paid overtime.

Young also recommended that Environmental Services expand enforcement of abuses by residents and broaden its bulky-item pickup education program.

City Managing Director Roy Amemiya and Environmental Services generally agreed with the recommendations, the audit said.

The city switched to a monthly bulky-item pickup schedule from an appointment-based service more than a decade ago, and the audit said many of the problems persisted. A 2014 Council bill that would have reverted bulky-item pickup back to by-appointment-only — for a fee — was shelved in committee.

In May 2016 the Council hiked the fines for illegal refuse disposal.

The audit was prompted by the excessive number of complaints about bulky-item pickup service, the report said.