Trash/recycling/yard-waste pickup catchup, and today’s briefing

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Seattle Public Utilities is checking on the official pickup-catchup status for us, on behalf of those who reported last night that they were missed yesterday — but we can report in the meantime that yard waste (including Christmas trees) in our neighborhood, scheduled for yesterday, has just been picked up now. Meantime, SPU is supposed to be part of today’s City Council briefing on the December storm response — yesterday’s briefing before the entire council focused on two departments; this one’s wider in scope, before a joint meeting of the council committees responsible for Emergency Management/Utilities and Transportation, and includes public-comment time. 9:30 this morning, City Hall, you’re invited to be there, or you can watch via Seattle Channel, cable 21, seattlechannel.org online. 9:32 AM UPDATE: The briefing has begun. As we did yesterday, we’ll “tweet” a few in-progress updates (they’ll turn up here and in the turquoise box in the WSB sidebar), and write a full article afterward.

kathy January 6, 2009 (9:39 am)

I got a call this morning from SPU to make sure my garbage/recycling got picked up yesterday. It did. I had filed a report of no pick-up last Monday on their website and they were following up. I was glad to have the call from them.

cynthia January 6, 2009 (10:02 am)

We live just a few blocks from WSB HQ and unfortunately our yard waste has not yet been picked up…maybe I’ll need to follow up with SPU. Or perhaps they’re just on a circuitous route?

JW January 6, 2009 (10:39 am)

Christmas trees are blowing all over Genesee Hill blocking street lanes and making a general mess of things. According to SPU website our section of 55th was scheduled for recycle yesterday (not that I saw a truck) even though recycle was collected last week and all of us have 4 weeks of yardwaste plus those flying Christmas trees that need collecting – everyone in the neighborhood has yardwaste out – sure would be helpful if SPU clarified things for us. Gotta go catch another wayward Xmas tree.

WSB January 6, 2009 (11:12 am)

Please be sure to call if you are a Monday house and haven’t seen yard-waste pickup yet. 684-3000.

P January 6, 2009 (11:27 am)

I sure hope 684-3000 is better with the trash than they were with my electrical issue! At 4:00 pm they finally admitted that they didn’t have a clue on my outage and my address was hosed up in their system!

JW January 6, 2009 (11:36 am)

Thanks WSB – I posted on SPU website last night but given the winds and things blowing around I think I’ll call too. If they are not going to pick up I bring everything back in.

mae January 6, 2009 (11:48 am)

I just called about our missed Monday yard waste pick up in north Admiral. They said it was recycling pick up yesterday and yard waste will be next Monday! This will make 5 weeks with no yard waste pick up!

Suzanne January 6, 2009 (11:53 am)

My yard waste was not picked up yesterday either and I called SPU this AM. The man I spoke to said he would send out someone to pick it up as well as the rest on our block in Arbor Heights. He said to leave it out until 6:00PM tomorrow. He had not gotten any internal emails about this missed pick up and did not have an explanation.

GenHillOne January 6, 2009 (11:54 am)

Key work here is call IF you were scheduled for Monday yardwaste pick-up. I think we’re on the same schedule as JW and even though we finally got it last week, we also had regularly scheduled recycling pick-up yesterday. My understanding is that we won’t see yardwaste collection until next Monday; they were pretty clear that they weren’t going to have make-up days for that. It’s really blowing out there, so if you don’t have yardwaste on this week’s schedule, perhaps the trees, or whatever else can go with the wind, should be taking away from the curb. We just saw, and wrangled, some runaway containers ourselves.

MargL January 6, 2009 (1:05 pm)

Yay! After reporting it online and calling today they finally came and took the yardwaste away! Hopefully the truck will do a tour of Arbor Heights before returning to base for another call out.

AlkiResident January 6, 2009 (1:19 pm)

just a slight rant…to the dirty birdy who dumped their blue sofa in front of an apartment garbage bin along my alley. After three weeks of dealing with extra trash set out along the alley, you decide to dump your cushion-less sofa the day after the garbage gets picked up!!! You couldn’t even put it in the bin so people had to drive around it. After a week, my husband helped put it in the apartment manager’s truck so he could haul it off to the dump. Dispose of your own trash – it would have been free all last month. Probably a better forum somewhere, but I had to get this off my chest.

JW January 6, 2009 (1:38 pm)

GHO

My only gripe is why we were scheduled for recycle yesterday and not yardwaste since they were adamant last week recycle only and no yardwaste – poor planning and communication by SPU. Now we’ll have 5 weeks of accumulated yardwaste/veggie scraps to try and keep the rodents and raccoons out of, blowing Xmas trees and 3 weeks of recycle since no one put it out – everyone was expecting yardwaste to be picked up. I know I’m not paying for yardwaste pick up in December if I’m billed for it!

WSB January 6, 2009 (1:46 pm)

The trash etc. portion of today’s briefing is the third report we’ll be writing – right now we’re almost done with #2, buses, following #1, roads. They did reiterate that the rebate plan is being worked out and that there’s a meeting later today at which some of those details will be nailed down (apparently involving SPU and the mayor’s office; City Council President Richard Conlin said somewhat testily during the briefing that he felt the council should get a chance to say something about the plan before it’s put into place, too). Also, Councilmember Richard McIver talked about this very issue – critters wreaking havoc with accumulated trash – and asked half-seriously if a squirrel-proof trash can lid were in the works.

GenHillOne January 6, 2009 (1:51 pm)

Not disagreeing with you there JW – it’s definitely gross!

JW January 6, 2009 (2:04 pm)

GHO

Yup, just drug in my container and some of my neighbors’ whose lids were blown open – a few Christmas trees got away though. Rebates will be appreciated but a pick-up more so at this point…