“Dear PoPville,
With Mayor Bowser’s twelfth year in office rapidly approaching, I wanted to see how the POPville readers see the “response to their issues” from her Office of Constituent Relations and Services (MOCRS)? And if they, too, have seen a decline in the service that was specifically set up as the “avenue of last resort” to solve our dat-to-day issues
Recently, (well for the last 5 months), my recycling has just stopped being picked up and I have experienced one of the most jaw-dropping runarounds I have ever experienced in my almost 3 decades of living in DC. I will start this with I live on a street where the majority of my neighbors have “alley access” (I do not) meaning my weekly trash and recycling pick-up is in front of my house, it has been missed many times over the years…early on in her terms, a 311 request or call to the DPW helpline did the trick but right around the beginning of this year all avenues to get this issue dealt with seem to have gone “cold”.
Since January,
my trash gets picked up regularly but recycling started to pile up with weeks going by and like instructed, I would call 311 (or went on the app) and usually after 3-4 weeks of consistently filing reports it would work…but the “pick up day miss” problem just continued every single week…I called the DPW “helpline”, left messages and sent emails just asking to “remind the recycling team to pick-up on the front” and crickets…I called my Councilmember and was instructed to “call the MOCRS Ward Rep” and my MOCRS Ward rep never seemed to respond to any form of communication. A few weeks went by and I decided to “elevate” the issue calling the Director of MOCRS and he assured me “he would fix this once and for all”…still every week, like clockwork I would text him “they missed me once again”…pick-up would happen but the scheduled pick-up day “miss” continues to even this week…now crickets even from the Director, in spite of having been given his cell number and the green light to “call text at ANY time”.
I ask because with the never-ending rise in service fees/taxes in DC, news of a dwindling city budget and the announcement of DC funds being used for the stadium, Mayor Bowser will soon be eyeing another run for the Wilson Building so I wanted to ask your readers their experiences with the MOCRS Office, an office specifically set up to help residents deal with the declines in services we have all experienced?
2 of my 80+ y/o, SENIOR CITIZEN neighbors told me their side of the street have had similar pick-up issues with their trash for months as well…this is nonsense, and maybe someone will actually start fixing this.
Many thanks,
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