Winter Springs approves additional yard waste pickups 

With less than a month of hurricane season left, Winter Springs continues to clean itself up following massive amounts of yard waste still needing to be addressed post Hurricane Milton. 

During the city commission’s most recent meeting, Mayor Kevin McCann said that the city has a “number of issues” to deal with when it comes to yard waste and storm debris pickup. 

The commission was presented with a proposal from the city’s solid waste contractor Waste Pro, with which they’ve held an agreement since 2006, for additional weekend waste pickups for smaller yard debris, totalling $80,000. 

“We also have another vendor that is going around with big claw trucks and picking up trees and lots of debris, and they are making significant progress throughout the city,” McCann said. “They will still be working a couple of weeks, but this specifically is talking about paying Waste Pro just shy of $40,000 a day to cover the next couple of Saturdays to get all of those bagged and binned yard waste, the smaller stuff that the claw truck can’t pick up.” 

The proposal passed, with Commissioner Victoria Bruce against and Commissioner Ted Johnson not in attendance. 

Before the vote, Bruce questioned what the timeline for the waste clear up would be in the event the proposal was not approved by the commission. 

“My best estimate would be Thanksgiving or early December,” Waste Pro Division Manager Eric Saxton said.

Track the progress with this debris pickup map, created by the city. 

Saxton told McCann that this was the first time in 10 years that he’d seen the company have to do three back-to-back, double-day pickups due to the volume of waste. 

“The amount of yard waste is on biblical proportions,” Saxton said. “I’m sure you drive through your streets, every resident has bags and containerized yard waste, and that is a struggle we have currently. I know you have your debris contractors, but the amount of bag and containerized yard waste is unbelievable.”

Saxton estimated that if the waste pickup proposal were to be approved, pickups could be completed as early as Nov. 13, adding that three other similar contracts have already been approved in Seminole County and Lake Mary.

“So other communities, other cities in Seminole County are facing the same issues?” McCann asked, to which Saxton agreed.

Brian Dunnigan, director of operations for Winter Springs, said there have been some issues with pickups due to some of the contractor stipulations required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement.

“What’s causing some of the struggles, and this is just driving a lot of the city post storm, is people throwing everything into one pile,” Dunnigan said. “We’ve tried to push out messaging that’s consistent, to educate residents that those are really different products that are picked up.”

Dunnigan said it’s best to encourage residents to not “commingle” different items into one pile. 

“That really would help expedite all of the different service providers when it comes to picking up these items,” Dunnigan said. 

“For the residents to understand, we’re just talking about yard waste alone,” McCann said. “We have contractors working on it … one is picking up with a big, giant claw truck that just picks up tree trunks and really large items … then we have Waste Pro that comes and picks up the bags. All of those things are not allowed to be mixed together.”

McCann added that while the city could potentially see reimbursement for costs incurred by the bagged waste pickup, most likely those eventual reimbursements will be for storm debris pickup and clearing. 

“We have another contractor that is following behind those claw trucks and making sure everything is accountable,” McCann said. “[FEMA] will reimburse us a couple million dollars for the cost of picking all that stuff up. And so to get those couple million dollars back, we have to really regulate it.They will not pay for anything that’s bagged.”

Saxton said there have been other disruptions to the company’s typical waste collection process such as the Seminole County Central Transfer Station, a facility where solid waste is unloaded and reloaded for transport to a final disposal site in Geneva, being closed to redo the facility floors. 

“That’s another curveball that we’re throwing in the mix,” Saxton said. “They’re hoping that’ll be opened by Dec. 2.” 

McCann also asked if a caveat could be added to allow for the city manager to approve waste pickup decisions, such as the Waste Pro proposal, to expedite storm recovery without having to wait for a commission meeting for approval, in the case another storm were to hit the city within the final month of hurricane season. 

Bruce said she would be against adding such a caveat to the proposal.

“I’m very, very, very reluctant to approve anything over 50,000 and just blanket for things not hurricane related, as has been done in the past,” Bruce said. 

Commissioner Rob Elliott said he believed the commission should stick with what the original proposal covered and consider McCann’s proposal separately at some point. 

“It’s not a bad proposal, but I think it just muddies the water a little bit,” Elliott said. 

With the proposal approved and the estimated pickup completion date on Nov. 13, the city is moving forward with its post Hurricane Milton cleanup. But as is the case with previous storm management discussions, one of the biggest factors the city seems to continue to consider is the best path to financial reimbursement. 

“Unfortunately, it’s government work at its finest, where $2 million to our city is a lot of money, and we need to be able to collect that money,” McCann said. 

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