SELMA – Trash pickup will return to the alleys for some residents after the Selma City Council directed Mid Valley Disposal (MVD) to take action.
Mid Valley Disposal CEO Joseph Kalpakoff said his drivers could transition back to picking up trash and recycling in some alleyways within 30 days of the city council meeting on Feb. 3. Residents and certain council members have demanded MVD revert back to alley pickup since the trash hauler took over from Waste Management in July 2024; however, city staff and MVD representatives have consistently cautioned against alley pickup, as it poses a driver safety issue and exacerbates alley deterioration.
Kalpakoff and Public Works Director Michael Honn determined which alleys MVD could service by conducting individual studies of the city’s alleyways and labeling each alley as green for compatible and red for incompatible. They then overlaid their maps to come up with what was presented to the city council.
“The goal is to provide a safe community service to those alleys, where there’s not a safety concern, there’s not an injury concern to the public,” Kalpakoff said.
For example, Kalpakoff said some alleys have low-hanging wires or overgrown vegetation that makes it unsafe for large garbage trucks to drive through them. Others have poor road conditions and potholes that also cause problems. Kalpakoff said prior to MVD’s takeover, there were garbage trucks that got stuck in large potholes and had to be towed out.
Alleys marked green were concentrated in the central and north areas of the city, including most of the “letter” streets between Rose and Floral Avenue and along Whitson Street and Sylvia Street. Impacted residents should receive notice from Mid Valley over the next month before the change goes into effect. Kalpakoff said it may take about three to four collection cycles to fully implement the change, but MVD would get started on it immediately.
Mayor Scott Robertson was still dissatisfied with the number of alleys shown on the map in red. They included all neighborhoods with alleys south of Sylvia Street on the west side of Highway 99, south of Rose Avenue on the east side of the city, between Tulare Street and Chestnut Street on the west side of McCall Avenue and the Country Rose Estates subdivision.
He called into question alley infrastructure issues cited by the public works director. Robertson claimed that if concerns about sewer, water and utility lines were as critical as the city says, other agencies like the Selma-Kingsburg-Fowler County Sanitation District (SKF) and California Water Service (Cal Water) would have tried to do something about it before now.
“I talked to SKF and I’ve talked to Cal Water, and I would think they’d be here tonight as your biggest cheerleader if they didn’t want alley pickup again, but it’s just not the case,” Robertson said.
Robertson said the city had alley trash pickup for 50 years before MVD came in, and they could “probably struggle by with another 50.” With that, he said the city’s “drawing” of compatible alleys was appreciated, but there wasn’t a lot of “backup” on the map provided. Robertson asked Kalpakoff to conduct an additional study into the alleys marked red by the city.
Safety, infrastructure considerations
Ever since MVD took over in Selma, residents have lodged complaints with the city council about how the contract was awarded to MVD and the sudden change to curbside trash pickup. Robertson said to the public that what they were hearing at the Feb. 3 meeting was that when the contract was awarded, it was done so without any explanation that the transition to curbside was going to happen.
“It was forced on us, so to speak, and what you’re getting is pushback from the citizens, and we’ve been asking for this for many months now, of putting this pickup back because it was taken away from us without any of this explanation that we’re getting tonight, and a lot of this is very reasonable,” Robertson said. “Where was this in July, when we wanted this, when we needed this explanation?”
Although the city’s contract with MVD does not call for the change away from alley service, MVD executives and city officials have explained their reasoning in regular updates given to the council over the last eight months. At council meetings on both July 15 and Sept. 16, 2024, MVD and city staff discussed the purpose behind the change.
Kalpakoff has said on multiple occasions that MVD trucks are taller and heavier than other trash hauler vehicles because they use an alternative fuel, compressed natural gas (CNG), intended to be cleaner for the environment. This means that overhanging power lines and older asphalt in alleys may not have been a concern for previous haulers with different trucks, they are a concern for MVD.
Beyond safety concerns, city staff have attempted to explain their long-term thought process behind moving trash pickup from the alleys. Selma’s alleyways are not built for heavy, commercial-grade vehicles like garbage trucks, and so the material used to pave the alleys will not maintain its quality for as long as it will with regular, personal vehicle usage.
Further, alleys have access points to various underground infrastructure like storm drains and water, sewer and gas lines that may not be in the way of smaller vehicles but could be impacted by heavy-duty trucks.
While the city has alley infrastructure improvements worked into its capital improvement plan, alley upkeep has not been consistent over the years, and funding that can be used for alleys is harder to come by than funding for other city roads.
Noting that the alleys marked in red are concentrated in an already underserved area of Selma, City Manager Fernando Santillan said city staff wanted to direct the garbage trucks away from those alleys to prevent increased deterioration while the city works on alley reconstruction. Councilmembers said that while they understood that, they wanted to keep servicing alleys in the meantime.
“You guys did it, you raised the safety issue,” Robertson said. “So of course we’re going to be prudent and cautious, that’s what we’re going to do. You picked the more prudent and cautious map, and good for you. That’s good. Now go back to the drawing board, and I think we need to get more alleys that we can pick up from, because our people deserve it; that’s what they want.”
The council unanimously directed MVD to return to alley pickup along the areas marked in green and to return to council in 45 days with an updated study that looks at the alleys marked in red.
