ST. LOUIS — The city’s trash commissioner, Todd Waelterman, was put on leave Thursday following widespread problems with pickup in recent weeks, officials said.
Waelterman did not respond to a request for comment.
Nick Dunne, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, said he could not comment on a personnel matter.
Waelterman started running the city’s trash-collecting operation for Jones last spring after a six-year stint as director of city operations under previous mayors Francis Slay and Lyda Krewson.
The trash division had long struggled with reliability, equipment breakdowns and illegal dumping, and had recently picked up another problem: a labor shortage.
By July 2021, the city started throwing out recycling with the trash in much of the city in an effort to catch up on understaffed routes. Residents who still wanted to recycle had to take items to drop-off facilities themselves.
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The city restarted regular recycling collection in late May, but almost as soon as it did, complaints about trash started flooding in.
The city’s Citizens Service Bureau received more 1,800 complaints about overflowing containers and missed pickup days in June — nearly five times what it received in June 2021. Angry aldermen said the administration had sacrificed one service for another.
Officials denied doing any such thing. Dunne, the mayor’s spokesman, told the Post-Dispatch last week that the issue ultimately came down to staffing issues and trucks breaking down.
He noted that the city is offering $3,000 bonuses to new drivers in an effort to recruit more of them, and recently added another mechanic shift to repair more trucks. It was not immediately clear where Waelterman’s leave fit into the strategy.
One of the administration’s most frequent critics quickly formed an opinion Thursday afternoon, though.
“I think they were looking for a scapegoat,†said Alderman Joe Vaccaro, D-23rd Ward. “And they found one.â€
