New routes, old problem: Fort Worth botched informing residents of garbage truck changes

By all accounts, the city of Fort Worth has modernized its garbage collection routes, allowing for more efficiency and more reasonable hours for crews.

Too bad the plan for informing residents about the changes was straight out of the 1980s.

Years of growth that wasn’t evenly distributed through the city made for crowded routes on certain days, especially Tuesdays. So, city officials made sweeping revisions that changed pickup day for about one-third of households.

The problem is how they tried to let everyone know. The main tool was a series of postcards, which arrived just as voters’ mailboxes were overflowing with campaign fliers. City Council members complained they weren’t made aware soon enough, and not enough residential organizations were alerted so they could pass along the word.

Other than water, garbage pickup is the most vital city service for most residents. Problems with trash collection will infuriate them, and rightly so. Households pay anywhere from $12.50 to $22.75 a month for trash pickup; it’s a bargain, but we’re still entitled to good customer service.

For the most part, we get it in Fort Worth. The city’s recycling and bulk pickup programs work well, and the switch to carts years ago has reduced trash strewn through our neighborhoods. The call center that handles complaints is generally prompt and courteous.

But with a quarter-million households to serve, the Code Compliance department has to be a stickler for rules. Woe be unto the customer whose cart is overflowing even a bit or whose cans might be too close together. If customers must so carefully adhere to rules, we can fairly expect better than what we got in the transition to new routes.

If you had to communicate with a diverse, widespread audience in 2022, would the U.S. mail be your primary choice? For an ever-increasing share of Americans, snail mail is an afterthought. Some barely remember to check it, and with the Postal Service’s recent challenges, it’s not as reliable as it used to be. Plus, a database glitch delayed the mailing of postcards about trash pickup, city officials said, compounding these problems.

The city has email addresses for many residents who pay bills online. It has phone numbers and an auto-dialing system. Code Compliance officials told the Star-Telegram that too many customers would think a call from the city was spam.

Hmmm. One of the pillars of competent communications is repetition. Why not hit people with an email, a call, a note in water bills? People expect personalized messages in this era, and while that might not be realistic for a large city, relying on the U.S. mail is not enough. The operation was plagued, it seems, by a lack of creativity and imagination.

Code compliance director Brandon Bennett has taken responsibility, as he should. It’s important that the city learns from this episode and improves. Growth isn’t slowing, and services will continue to be strained and require revisions.

The best way to prepare residents for changes is to make sure they know about them well in advance. That’s going to take a lot more than postcards.