Temple moves to weekly call-for-service model for brush and bulk pickups, cites reliability and fleet limits

Temple City Council staff described a new call-for-service system for residential brush and bulk collections at a workshop where they said the change aims to make pickups more reliable and reduce long curbside piles.

The city transitioned from an earlier schedule to a model in which residents call to schedule a pickup during a given week. David (staff) said the change followed a recent contractor sweep that removed nearly 900 tons of material and consumed about 900 staff hours. He told the council the first week of the new system logged 313 requests (175 brush and 138 bulk) and said the city planned routes around truck availability: "We did 5 trucks times 60 collections a day times 4 days of service, and that is the number of collections that we were going to schedule out," David said.

City staff and customer-care leaders said the new workflow includes scripted questions for callers, an optional text reminder, and a written confirmation after a pickup. Heather (customer care staff) described capacity controls: callers are offered a week range for service and can opt into a text reminder; Friday is reserved as a buffer for re‑trips or operations tasks. Heather said the city was scheduling roughly 70 collections for a coming week and expected more as residents learned the system.

Why this matters: City staff framed…