Many Baltimore County residents home for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday were surprised to see trash trucks rolling down their street.
That’s because the county’s printed pick-up schedule listed this as a “slide” week in which trash and recycling collection would be pushed back to later days to compensate for workers getting the day off.
“It was an error,” said Ron Snyder, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works and Transportation. “A lot of people were understandably upset.”
The problem started when the county decided to resume mailing customized printed calendars to homeowners after skipping a year. In the process the coders setting up the mailers – no small task due to the many routes in the county – inputted the more than a dozen county holidays, Snyder said.
But the trash haulers are independent contractors and observe only seven holidays. That means that on Monday, county offices were closed but the waste haulers were still working.
Three other holidays are incorrectly listed as slide weeks on the printed calendars: Presidents Day (Feb. 16), Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Oct. 12), and Veterans Day (Nov. 11). That is wrong and trash should be put out as usual those weeks.
“Errors happen and we’re trying to get the word out,” Snyder said.
The county advises homeowners confused about the schedule to double-check holiday weeks by inputting their address into an online, printable calendars available here on the county website. It has been corrected for the proper holidays.
For the record: the slide will be observed for Memorial Day (May 25), Juneteenth (June 19), Independence Day (July 4), Labor Day (Sept. 7), Thanksgiving (Nov. 26), Christmas (Dec. 25), and New Year’s Day (Jan. 1). Regular schedules are followed on all other weeks.
It’s the latest trouble for the county’s communication of collection schedules. Schedules sent out a year ago provided instructions on what could and couldn’t be recycled but omitted the familiar calendar. Instead, it featured a QR code to the county website.
The county said at the time that the change was made to save money and natural resources required to manually program 115 routes and get them sent to the correct addresses.
Nevertheless, the change set off an outcry among residents who were accustomed to consulting the paper calendar throughout the year. To make matters worse, the new guide listed the wrong dates for four of the seven holidays (Christmas was listed as falling on Dec. 26, for example). A two-page correction mailer was sent.
Last February the county also went online with a printable calendar that residents with access to a computer could use to check the schedule for their communities.
A post Tuesday on the Public Works department Facebook page says the department “wants to sincerely apologize to any Baltimore County resident who missed putting out their trash or recycling for collection on Monday.”
“We truly appreciate our residents and remain committed to providing clear communication and dependable service,” it said.
I appreciate reading the little used yet apt verb “bedevil” in your headline. Clever word usage.
Happy to see that the county makes stupid mistakes too. Not just the city!