CHULA VISTA, Calif. (FOX 5/KUS) — As trash continues to pile up along South Bay streets, Chula Vista Mayor John McCann is calling for city leaders to help find ways to address the situation during a special emergency meeting.
For the past several days, sanitation workers across San Diego County have joined others across the country for a “sympathy strike” in solidarity with those in Boston, Massachusetts who are demanding better wages and benefits.
Now, with workers walking off the job, more than 283,000 Chula Vista residents have not been getting their trash collected.
In 2022, the Teamsters Union and Republic Services had signed previous negotiations after a similar strike. This time, however, the situation is different.
“There is no relationship in the sense that we have no control over what’s happening in Boston,” McCann said during a guest segment on Good Morning San Diego on Monday. “It’s unfortunate that they’re targeting our community for their failure.”
He said Republic Services will bring in a support team from Imperial Valley in Arizona to help with trash collection. With trash bins overflowing during hot summer temperatures, McCann said one of the options that city council might have to consider is declaring a state of emergency.
“We are being proactive whereas in 2022, one of the lessons we learned was it happened so quickly and the city did not take action ahead of time,” he said. “We want to be ahead of the curve. If we declare a state of emergency, what that does is allows us to use our own employees as well as be able to get our partners to be able to start picking up trash, making sure that we avoid a public health issue.”
At the meeting, McCann said he hopes city council will be able to create a firm timeline for what steps to take next.
The public is invited to provide input during the council meeting. The meeting will be held at 276 Fourth Ave. in Chula Vista on Monday at 5 p.m.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
