Glenn Heights council hears Community Waste Disposal explain rate increase and respond to service complaints

Community Waste Disposal officials told the Glenn Heights City Council on May 20 that a contract cost adjustment set to take effect June 1 reflects rising disposal, fuel and consumer-price indexes and would raise the company’s internal residential charge from $15.13 to $16.22.

The matter drew extensive council scrutiny because many residents have complained about missed pickups, brush piles and apparent inconsistencies in how crews apply the contract’s collection rules. Mayor Sonya A. Brown and council members pressed CWD executives for evidence of how the company tracks missed service, whether liquidated-damages owed to the city have been collected and whether CWD will return for quarterly public briefings.

CWD President Jason Ramer and CEO/founder Greg Ramer described how the company calculates its annual adjustment and defended the current five-day collection model. “The short answer is we cannot,” Ramer said when asked whether the company could shift the city to a single weekly pickup day, explaining CWD does not keep sufficiently many idle rear-load trucks to run the entire city on one day. The company said it uses three public indices in its contract adjustment calculation: the Dallas–Fort Worth CPI-U (with the energy component removed), the Henry Hub natural‑gas index…