AgdaPkt 2006-03-27 - Laserfiche WebLink

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7A In comparison, from January 23,2006 to February 3,2006, the two-week period prior to Page 2 the service day change, Allied had 128 calls for missed pick-ups. These were apart from the complaints received by City staff. We were expecting a number of complaints concerning missed pick-ups because of these route changes, but not as many as 900. We understand some of those complaints may have been unnecessary because Allied had until 6:00 p.m. to complete their collections as Allied may have, in some instances, collected the refuse or recycling by 6:00 p.m. SBWMA Actions On January 18, 2006 the SBWMA conducted a hearing on Allied's performance in several areas including customer service. At this performance hearing (the Hearing Board consisted of the city managers from Foster City, Menlo Park, and San Carlos), there was confusion over how Allied was coding or characterizing in their complaint database the nature of the complaints that they had received. The confusion grew out of the contradictory descriptions of how complaints were being coded. This resulted in significant differences relative to their performance compared to the performance standards contained within the collection franchise agreements. The Hearing Board recommended that the SBWMA Board determine how complaints from customers are actually recorded by Allied and then, based on this determination, assess liquidated damages for any performance standards that Allied fails to achieve. At its February meeting, the SBWMA Board agreed to contract with Hilton, Farnkopf and Hobson to meet with Allied and review Allied's customer complaint tracking procedures and data, and report their findings to the SBWMA Board. Hilton, Farnkopf and Hobson expects to report their findings to the SBWMA Board at the April Board meeting. Potential Solutions 1) Direct staff to review the findings that Hilton, Farnkopf and Hobson reports to the SBWMA Board and determine if any individual action addressing customer service issues on the part of the City is warranted. 2) The City could, for a temporary period, assign a City employee to physically inspect different areas of the City to count the number of missed collections. Doing this may produce limited information as staff will be unable to determine missed collections in areas that receive side-yard service or in instances where the resident has removed their un-emptied container from the curb. Our intention would be to staff this undertaking either with an existing full-time employee on overtime or a casual employee depending upon availability. The costs incurred by this inspection program would then be charged back to Allied and would then be passed-through to all rate payers. The overtime cost of a lead Public Works maintenance worker would be about $47 per hour. We anticipate that less than two hours per day be required to perform this inspection. If an inspection were conducted once per week, the total costs should not exceed $100 per week. Given the collection franchise's current approximate annual revenue of $11 million, the affect on collection rates would be minimal.