Walled Lake council debates response to repeated Priority Waste pickup delays

Walled Lake’s City Council devoted the longest discussion of its meeting to residents’ complaints about repeated late or missed garbage pickups since Priority Waste assumed service under the countywide contract. Council members, the mayor and city manager described ongoing reliability problems, discussed potential responses — including litigation, withholding payment or renegotiating service days — and agreed to press the contractor for improvements and invite Priority Waste leaders to the council’s October meeting to explain operational plans.

The exchange began when a council member said “we do have a bad situation going on in Walled Lake with the garbage pickup,” summarizing emails and calls from residents about missed collections. City manager Witt and other officials said the contractor has been collecting service data and communicating with staff but that pickups are frequently a day late and occasionally accumulate into weekends. Staff and several members warned that withholding payment or pursuing litigation could leave the city without service because Walled Lake is a relatively small contract in Priority Waste’s portfolio.

Council members described what they and staff believe to be causes: the contractor inherited fleets from prior providers that were not always serviceable, temporary rental trucks are in use, and staffing or route coordination problems exist across neighboring jurisdictions. One council member noted other municipalities have leveraged larger contracts to compel contractor leadership to attend meetings, while the manager and several members urged caution about immediate litigation, saying smaller cities lack the leverage of larger jurisdictions.

Council debated short‑term operational options. Suggestions included letting staff and the contractor try schedule adjustments (one proposed moving Walled Lake’s pickup day to Thursday to align fleet routing), asking Priority Waste for a firm day-of-week commitment, and setting a threshold of missed pickups that would trigger emergency council action. Staff and members emphasized they would act if the problem became a public‑health issue.

No formal punitive action was taken at the meeting. The council asked staff to continue negotiations, monitor performance, and report back; members also approved an invitation for Priority Waste representatives to attend the next council meeting so the public could hear the company’s plan for correcting service problems. Council members urged residents to help by placing properly bagged trash at the curb and noted that some misses stem from items being left out incorrectly.

Next steps: staff will continue to coordinate with Priority Waste, gather service data, and present a status update at the next meeting; the council said it will consider an emergency meeting should a service outage rise to a public‑health level.