POLK COUNTY, Fla. — The Polk County board of commissioners just declared a state of emergency, saying Waste Management has consistently missed trash pickups for over a year.

“Polk County Waste Management skipped trash pickup before Thanksgiving. What am I supposed to do with that?” questioned one Polk County resident. “We’re all getting sick of this.”  

“I’d love to flush them out, get rid of them completely and hire someone else, but there’s no one else to hire,” said County Commissioner Bill Braswell. “There’s no garbage trucks to buy.”

In 2017, Polk county signed a 7-year, $73 million dollar deal with Waste Management and as of the last year, some folks are saying they’ve had to wait almost a month to get their trash picked up.

“They want to keep telling us the trucks are broken down. Well, bring some from where they’re not broke down,” Braswell said. “We need our garbage picked up and we need them to do it.”

He was very vocal at the last commissioner's meeting, saying that he’s tired of hearing the same thing.

“We had them on the carpet Tuesday and they said yes, all those things are correct and we keep hearing - we’re going to fix it but they don’t fix it,” he continued.

Some resident now trying to take matters into their own hands.

“You have a week’s worth of garbage in there the first week. What do you do with it the next three? They dump it on the street, on the road, they find some other dumpster,” Braswell said. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

“We’re at our wits’ end,” he said. “We’re getting more in the garbage business than we want to, but we don’t ever want to be in this situation again.”

Waste Management didn’t return a call from Spectrum News Monday, but they responded to some of the commissioner’s concerns saying the company is struggling with a lack of resources that have grown since the pandemic.