As the days get shorter, the nights get cooler, college football returns, and the leaves change colors, we are reminded that summer is coming to a close and fall is upon us. One highlight of fall that I’m excited to bring back is the Township Open House. After a 5-year hiatus, we will be hosting the community on Sunday, October 1st for a day filled with fun, food, activities and information about services available to residents. In addition to the Township departments, we will also be highlighting our partners in the community such as Charles Bower School Farm, E.L. Johnson Nature Center, Township Library, Oakland County Parks & Rec, Oakland County Health Department, the Rotary Club, and more. Please join us, as we bring the community together to celebrate what makes Bloomfield Township special!
In addition to celebrating the Township services this fall, we also can highlight the transition that happened this past summer by switching the solid waste provider to residents. Although it is typical to change providers often, typically every 6–8 years here in Bloomfield, it isn’t a choice that is taken lightly. You have likely seen the problems GFL is having in Canton Township where the compost services halted on Monday–Friday throughout summer and with the City of Dearborn currently using DPW staff to pick up trash on weekends. These are just some of the things we feared looming ahead for Bloomfield when we decided to put the contract out for bid. Luckily, we were able to find a new provider, Priority Waste, that provides the desired partnership style relationship with accountability in customer service, and a desire to continuously improve.
Solid waste removal is one of the only services that touches every single household every week, and yet this very personal service has to be provided by a third party. Considering there are approximately 16,000 accounts, and that account information was not handed over in time from GFL, we were thankful Priority Waste proactively reached out to residents to create account information and practiced routes for weeks prior to the start in preparation for transition. Since accounts have 3 services including garbage, recycling, and compost, that equates to over 51,000 touches with our residents, meaning 51,000 possible mistakes every single week. It was amazing to see that during the 5 week transition, there were only 235 reported errors out of a total of 258,225 service touches.
I asked the Priority Executive team some questions about the transition. See our other Township News story: Q&A with Dani Walsh and Priority Waste for actual data provided to show trends from week 1 to week 5, covering July 3rd – August 5th. It is great to see that in addition to weekly ticket counts going down, the time it takes to complete the routes has been reduced as well. Thank you to all of you for your grace & patience during the transition to change over every single residence, approximately 16,000 to the new service. It wasn’t an easy task, but together we made it through. If you do experience an issue or error in the future, please make sure to contact the Priority Waste team directly to speed up the process for a solution. You can reach the Priority dedicated Bloomfield Township Logistic Driver Coordinators (LDC) by phone at 586-228-1200 or 855-927-8365, by email at bloomfield@prioritywaste.com, or for more information on their website at https://www.prioritywaste.com/cities-we-serve/bloomfield-township/.
I wish you and your family a fun filled autumn season as we approach the holidays and the end of 2023. Please do come and celebrate with me at the Open House on October 1st!