Brookhaven’s trash pick-up contractor answered questions for the City’s Board of Aldermen Tuesday.

Arrow Disposal Services Inc. area manager Charles Lungrin spoke during the board’s regular meeting, following a Monday appearance before the county’s Board of Supervisors. Lungrin addressed questions of missed and late pickups.

“I’m getting calls asking me, ‘If we go a couple of weeks without garbage being picked up, why is my bill the same?’” said Ward 2 Alderman Shannon Moore. “That’s something (the City has) got to address, but you see the concern.”

The manager said he understood the concern, and that the company’s repeated issues are caused by a high rate of turnover, time to train, and constant vehicle upkeep and maintenance.

“My concern is that the customer service number is not working,” Mayor Joe Cox said.

“What are we doing about that?” asked Ward 4 Alderman Jeff Henning.

Lungrin said the company had been updating their phone system and it had caused some people to not be able to get calls through.

Aldermen said garbage pickup has been reduced to once a week, and certain areas of the city tend to be repeatedly missed on their scheduled days, sometimes even going a couple of weeks between pickups.

“Things aren’t getting picked up, and my question is, ‘Why not?’ This is a logistics problem,” said Alderman-at-large Don Underwood. “The section between West Chippewa and Minnesota on South Church Street has been entirely missed two weeks in a row. There’s more to it than manpower.”

Four new drivers were recently hired, Lungrin said, and were still learning their routes.

“It’s not that it’s once every three months,” Moore said. “It’s every week. I understand y’all signed on as our contractor. If it’s once a week, it really needs to happen. It’s sure enough a problem.”

Ward 6 Aldermen asked Lungrin to insure that ADSI workers were keeping cans out of the streets, also.

“We preach on that everyday,” he replied.

Lungrin said if anyone reports a missed pickup, it is handled as soon as possible, usually the same day.

“As of right now, we’re caught up,” he said.