Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves opened his July 22 press conference with a candid acknowledgment of the challenges surrounding the city’s recent curbside recycling changes, accepting full responsibility for communication shortcomings that left many residents confused about the new collection schedule. He didn’t mince words when addressing the communication problems that plagued the recycling program rollout.
“Messaging and playing offense on messaging is something that I feel overall we’ve done a pretty good job of in these few years that we’ve been here,” he said about communications. “It certainly wasn’t up to my standard, so the buck stops with me on that, but I can tell you we’re out, as we speak, trying to handle that.”
Despite efforts to inform residents through mail sent in June and press conferences, the mayor acknowledged the approach wasn’t adequate for reaching all 21,000 households affected by the change.
By the Numbers: The Impact of Change
Reeves provided concrete data on the program’s current status, revealing the scope of the transition challenges:
- 5,300 cans collected on Monday, July 21 alone (representing a quarter of the city’s 21,000 households).
- 316 hours of overtime logged by city teams since July 14.
- 721 phone calls received by the end of July regarding recycling issues
Taking Ownership and Making Amends
The mayor emphasized his administration’s commitment to making things right with residents, regardless of whether they received or read the initial communications. “We are looking into what the details of that will be in terms of bill credit.”
“Whether they got the message or they read the mail or they didn’t read the mail, regardless of that, it wasn’t up to our standard,” he explained. “What I’ve also learned is when you’re trying to either communicate or execute with 21,000 houses, I’ve not experienced yet where everything goes perfectly or swimmingly, but that again, no excuse from us.”
He and his time are working on the service recovery, with the mayor noting that residents deserve accountability from their city government.
Looking Forward
I pressed the mayor about number of calls City Hall had received about curbside recycling issues. He admitted, “I don’t know. That’s not because I’m avoiding knowing the numbers, I don’t know that exact one. Obviously I’m getting emails and listen, any of these big issues that affect a lot of people, sometimes they’re real issues, sometimes they’re perceived, and sometimes someone again missed mail or whatever.”
He continued, “But I’m not going to stand up here and say, ‘Well sorry citizens, you missed that piece of mail we sent to everybody with a new schedule and the new map in June. I can’t believe you missed that.” At the end of the day, we got to do a better job, and I have a high standard as high as probably in American country because of my background of doing what what you guys (the media) are doing now.”
Deputy City Administrator Amy Miller provided me additional context after the presser. She said the city had received 721 calls “for the whole month of July,” noting they weren’t all about recycling.