Here, I have been thinking that John Whitmire has gone a couple of weeks without negatively making the news. The buck stops at his desk, so when a news station reports that a community has not had its heavy trash picked up in months, that is on John Whitmire. Someone is F’ing up, Whitmire calls his head of public works the best, well, the best needs to find out what is causing problems and do something about it, or he tells the city that there is no money to do what routine service for the residents of Houston.
Neighbors Barry Kelly and Ronald Silva, who have lived in Binglewood for over 20 years, say the trash has been accumulating since late summer. Despite multiple calls to the city promising cleanup by Thanksgiving, the trash remained, and now pickup is delayed until after Christmas.
“The last time they came here was the end of August,” Kelly said.
Silva added, “It’s too much time, you know. We understand sometimes you have problems with the trucks or the driver or whatever, but no.”
The trash includes broken furniture, splintered wood, sharp objects, and household debris, raising safety concerns. Rats have been spotted running on the mattresses near the park, adding to residents’ worries.
After multiple complaints, KPRC 2 contacted the city’s solid waste department, which confirmed that heavy trash pickup is now underway. Officials said making a service request by calling 311 and obtaining a request number helps the city track complaints and speed up cleanup.
The city is trying to shift some of the blame to residents for not reporting the problem. No. According to the story, they called in, but the department responsible for the problem ignored them. Even if someone calls, one is not allowed to report that it is a community problem. Some time ago, we had a street where the heavy trash had not been picked up. As the neighborhood president at the time, I called 311. I was told that I could not report the entire street, but had to give street addresses.
There are more of John Whitmire’s failures:
On the right, there is a boat that was illegally dumped on a street, and no dangerous building is in sight. In a recent City agenda item, public works sought to argue that illegal dumping occurred because dangerous buildings attracted people to dump their trash there. It was a false argument that the City Department had to dig through numerous properties where illegal dumping and a dangerous building co-existed simultaneously. They were doing that because they wanted to use funds from a budget intended for storm sewers and flooding.
“A boat? Really? Hold on, hold on, a boat?” neighbor Gerald Jones said. “What is a boat doing in the middle of the street? That’s on the north side only in Acres Home.”
Neighbors told ABC13 it isn’t unusual to see people use the area as a dumping ground, but this time, the trash on South Lane near Ferguson Road included a boat blocking the right of way.
“Yeah, somebody dumped a boat in the middle of the street on South Lane,” Brandon Gourley, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said.
On Tuesday morning, ABC13 saw police along South Lane and a tow truck that pushed the boat off the road into a ditch. It’s unclear why it wasn’t towed away.
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