Casella plan becomes nightmare

The roll out of new garbage totes in Niagara Falls is a nightmare.

The Restaino administration cut a deal with Casella, the waste provider, to replace the obsolete blue totes with new, larger totes provided by Casella.

$1.2 million for totes bought the garbage company a 3-year extension on its garbage contract with the city.

From the start of the Casella relationship, council members like Donta Myles has said their phones have been ringing endlessly because of poor service from Casella. That was before the can fiasco. Call volume, according to Myles as well as council person Brian Archie, has tripled.

Now Myles, and others, are complaining Casella picked up their tote and it has been 3 weeks without a tote.

Last week, during Mayor Bob Restaino’s weekly Youtube missile, in a terse tone he said he would be meeting this week with the vendor. It was obvious he was displeased.

We might read an accounting carefully dictated to Rick Pfeiffer later this week, or hear someone say something of note during “for the good of the community” at Wednesday’s council meeting but it is blatantly obvious this tote trade has not gone as planned. Even the Gazette complained on its editorial page because someone noticed their cans were taken and not replaced.

Casella traded $1.2 million in garbage cans for a 5-year contract extension and no one in the city seems satisfied with the service being provided.