The trash and recycling collection has had numerous pitfalls for Lisbon since Johnson County Refuse was purchased by LRS.

Even before the purchase, there were occasional issues with Johnson County Refuse, but some of that was the team working for that company was smaller, a local group trying to collect waste on a timely manner.

We feel for the citizens of Lisbon. After all, this is a service you are paying for and want to be collected on a timely basis. Especially before the heat really starts picking up and you’re left with an even grosser mess after containers sit in the sun at the end of a driveway on a hot day and aren’t collected.

We also understand the frustration for the City of Lisbon. As city administrator Brandon Siggins has explained to council members in the past – waste management is one of the only passthrough accounts for the city. That means there is minimal funds left over each month, that citizens when they pay their bill are directly paying for their trash and recycling to be collected curb side and disposed of in a timely manner. And trying to do this with city staff in Lisbon is not as simple as a community like Mechanicsville, as there’s a lot more roads to cover in the community than people think. And if a truck were to break down with no contingency in place? Lisbon’s got a problem until that gets repaired on how to take care of something that continually gets generated in a community of more than 1,000…

And yet, there have been numerous delays or missed pickups, not just some in the last month. Numerous social media posts about “trucks broke down” or “routes were incomplete at the end of today. Please let us know so we can tell them where to go.” And dealing with this issue has been taxing on city staff, as they’re handling complaints from citizens about something citizens are paying for that has not lived up to the promises of the contract the city signed up for.

Let’s be clear – new management at LRS may be able to help correct the course of a ship, but the City of Lisbon is well within rights to let the company know when enough missed garbage pick-ups is enough and they are going to start the process of looking for another waste disposal company. Especially when it isn’t just a Lisbon community issue, but one impacting this entire region. It may be best for other cities to put LRS on notice as well that if things do not improve in a certain amount of time, the city will find another company to handle the issue.