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City staff: loss of landfill business forced sanitation budget cuts, staff transfers; no layoffs reported
Summary
City public works staff told the Wellington City Council that the city lost roughly 53% of its landfill volume after its largest hauler was bought by another company, costing the city more than $400,000 in revenue in 2024; the department cut about $120,000 and shifted employees by transfer and attrition, council was told.
Jeremy, a public works staff member, told the Wellington City Council on Oct. 7 that the city lost a major source of landfill revenue after its largest hauler from Sedgwick County was acquired by another company.
"Due to some circumstances outside of our control, our largest hauler out of the Sedgwick County area was bought up by another company. They are no longer bringing that trash down to our facility. That was about 53% of the total volume in 2024," Jeremy said. He told the council that represented a revenue loss of "400,000 plus" dollars and forced the sanitation budget to be cut by roughly $120,000.
The staff member outlined the department's response: reduce open positions through attrition, seek transfers to other public works divisions and ask employees to volunteer for reassignment. "We asked for volunteers as far as transfers to other departments... Over the course of about 3 weeks and different conversations as groups and individually, we did transfer out of 1 each of those departments into other public works positions," Jeremy said.
Jeremy told the council that the department aimed to avoid involuntary separations. "If we did come down to worst case scenario that someone was gonna have to lose their job, we could afford to hold them for a certain amount of time, and hopefully, they would be able to find another job," he said. Later in the meeting Mayor Soria thanked staff and noted, "nobody lost their jobs."
Jeremy also addressed online rumors about staffing and operations. "Most stuff out there on Facebook is absolutely not true. You can tell that nobody's watching meetings, coming to meetings, reading the memos," he said, adding that many sanitation costs are fixedfuel, equipment repair and personnelso revenue declines do not proportionally reduce expenses.
Council members asked few follow-up questions during the discussion. Councilman Westmoreland introduced the topic and asked Jeremy to speak to the council; after Jeremy's remarks, Council members expressed appreciation for the department's handling of the situation.
The council did not take formal action or vote on this item during the Oct. 7 meeting; the remarks occurred as part of the regular reports of council and city officials and as informational staff discussion.
