“A Forum on the City Garbage Ordinance,” the title of a recent Springfield public meeting, sounded like a recipe for complaints about disastrous public policy. Everybody knows, don’t we, that the city’s trash collection system, using multiple private haulers, leaves many households without regular pickups, an invitation for fly-dumping? Not so, says the Independent Coalition for our Neighborhoods, Springfield’s premier garbage watchdog. The ordinance is actually pretty good, says Jill Steiner, ICON’s president, noting that it clearly states every household must have trash service, and for rental property that’s the landlord’s responsibility. “We’ve got what it takes to make it work,” she says. “It just doesn’t.” The trash system used to be driven purely by citizen complaints, but now there are “zone managers,” employed by the Public Works department, whose job it is to report garbage that’s not being picked up. But their calls go to the city’s housing inspection department, which may or may not do anything about the problem. In many cases citizens must take garbage complaints to their zone manager, if they can find out who their zone manager is. There’s supposed to be a new button on the city’s website called “See, Click, Fix,” a one-stop-shop for citizen complaints, but apparently few people know it’s there or how to use it. ICON’s March 23 meeting will be a class on how to use the city’s website. Maybe we’re making progress. – Fletcher Farrar, editor
This article appears in February 5-11, 2026.
