PTITSBURGH — Trash has been piling up in city neighborhoods over the last several days as city leaders acknowledge that the delays have been a big problem.
Today, the head of public works repeated a claim from the mayor’s office that the city controller is to blame.
Channel 11’s Talia Kirkland spoke with the director, who said that the lack of operating garbage trucks and delayed trash services is a result of the city controller’s decision to withhold payments to the contracted vendor.
“We have had essentially six months of no payment to the vendor for vehicle maintenance,” said Public Works Director Chris Hornstein.
Hornstein said he was not made aware of the city controller’s decision to withhold payment from the department’s contracted vendor until months later…and has resulted in delayed repairs to their aging fleet of garbage trucks.
“We have started every day somewhere short of eight to ten trucks every day for the last two weeks,” said Hornstein.
Video from earlier this week shows trash overflowing into Oakland streets after the weekly garbage collection was missed.
“This is directly tied to the controller’s unilateral decision to withhold payment to our maintenance vendor.”
But City Controller Rachel Heisler says the invoices are being paid.
“We’ve decided we are only paying for work done at the city garage,” said Heisler.
She told us that the city pays a flat monthly fee of more than $706,000 but was being invoiced at a higher rate. Heisler said she requested itemized invoices, which turned out to be significantly less. She estimates that through June, the city has saved more than 400,000 dollars.
“If you or I got an invoice for work done at our home and our vehicles and a bill for $200, would you pay it if you didn’t know what they did? Probably not.”
“I would invite her to show the math of how she came to that conclusion,” said Hornstein.
The director disagrees and says that not only are they losing money on renting working trucks, but they are also placing workers in danger.
“I estimate that in the last two weeks alone $150,000 worth of increased cost in overtime, workers comp claims, and what will be released is increased vehicle maintenance from basically running our trucks into the ground,” said Hornstein.
The director confirmed that an additional trash pickup day has been added this weekend to help impacted communities.
On Friday, Deputy Mayor Pawlak issued a formal letter to City Controller Rachael Heisler calling for payment to be made to TransDev.
Letter to Controller Re Transdev Fleet Services Fleet Management & Maintenance Agreement 8-1-2025 by WPXI Staff on Scribd
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