City mayor warns of ‘lower level of service’
STAMFORD – Mayor David Martin is only exploring a reduction in weekly garbage and recycling collections, but still word got out.
The topic drew enough concern among members of a Board of Representatives committee that they put it on their agenda this week and met with Martin to discuss the mix of services he might consider cutting to balance a budget shattered by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our objective is to avoid service cutbacks that will come from cutbacks in the
budget,” Martin told members of the board’s Steering Committee. “I don’t believe there will have to be alternating weeks of garbage and recycling collection … but the reality is we will have to transition to a lower level of service.”
Martin has already sent 13 layoff notices, including some to laborers in the public works department, which includes garbage and recycling collection.
Martin has already announced that, because of the layoffs, the popular recycling center on Magee Avenue, which usually is open six days a week, is now open only on Saturdays.
More layoffs will come if eight city unions do not reach agreements with the city to freeze wages and switch to a less expensive health-care plan, Martin said. Two city unions have already settled on pacts and their members will not face layoffs.
On the school side, four unions are not negotiating, and layoff notices are being prepared, Superintendent Tamu Lucero has said.
Martin told the Steering Committee that the time for negotiating has just about run out.
“We’re already in mid-July and I have to start making layoffs because I cannot wait and expect to rectify this situation” too late in the fiscal year, which began July 1, Martin said. “There are additional service impacts that are hard to measure and will extend to snow plowing and leaf pickup and potholes.”
Representatives urged the mayor to notify them about services he may cut.
Rep. John Zelinsky Jr., D-11, vice chair of the board’s Operations Committee, said he learned about the drastic cut in recycling center hours from an upset constituent.
“She then said she was told by a city employee that there would be alternating days of garbage and recycling pickup, so that’s how I learned about that,” Zelinsky said. “I respectfully ask the mayor that, before these things are done, he give the board an opportunity to have him in to explain.”
His fellow representatives did not know the recycling center was closing on weekdays until he told them, Zelinsky said.
Representatives should not be learning such information from constituents, said Rep. Anabel Figueroa, D-8.
“My feelings get hurt when I hear changes are taking place that will affect our constituents and we don’t know about it,” Figueroa said.
Rep. David Watkins, R-1, urged Martin to notify representatives before word about service cuts reaches residents.
“I recommend to the mayor that as he considers the excruciating details that he’s going through that he bends over backwards to advise us as to what the changes are, because it’s inevitable that constituents will hear about it from somebody somewhere,” Watkins said. “Please, please keep us advised as to what you intend to do.”
Zelinsky put the recycling center service cuts on the agenda of the Operations Committee, which will meet at 6:30 p.m. July 28. Zelinsky, the committee vice chair, invited Martin, Operations Director Mark McGrath, and the chief of recycling and garbage collection, Dan Colleluori, to try to persuade them to restore some weekday hours at the recycling center.
Zelinsky sought to add a discussion of alternating garbage and recycling pickups to the Operations Committee agenda, but the chairman, Rep. Jonathan Jacobson, D-12, held it because Martin at this point has not decided to do it.
“My thought is to put (it) on the pending agenda to see how things play out” and reconsider it for the committee’s August agenda, Jacobson said.
Colleluori said he got the invitation to discuss the recycling center but didn’t know garbage and recycling collection might be on the table. He said Martin mentioned curtailing pickups about a month ago, when the city supervisors’ union, the MAA, was in negotiations. Colleluori heads the union, one of the two that reached agreements with the administration.
“I told the mayor then that we can’t cut garbage collection because of public-health issues,” Colleluori said. “I researched it with (state environmental officials) and they said no other city in Connecticut collects garbage every other week. Some municipalities collect recycling every other week, but recycling volume in Stamford is huge.”
Some representatives said the recycling stream will become contaminated because residents will throw trash in those bins if collections are alternating.
Zelinsky said constituents tell him they fill their garbage bins each week.
“How are they going to do two weeks?” he asked.
Residents may tune into the July 28 Operations Committee meeting by visiting http://www.boardofreps.org/