Christine Kajfasz suffered a spinal cord injury last year and now uses a wheelchair and a walker to get around.
Chores around her Toledo home that once seemed easy are now difficult. Taking out the trash is one of the things with which Ms. Kajfasz needs help.
“I have an aide who comes and helps me with things, and she takes my garbage every Thursday evening and probably one of the neighbors takes the carts back to the house,” Ms. Kajfasz said.
Like other Toledoans, Ms. Kajfasz was unaware of a volunteer service that helps disabled people with their trash. Also, like others, she plans to inquire now that she learned of it last week from news reports that Toledo and Lucas County were squabbling over who is responsible to provide the help.
Disabled Toledoans have been getting help moving trash containers for years from the nonprofit Triad Residential Solutions, which has offices in Maumee and Grafton, Ohio. The firm sends its employees to help Toledoans citywide at no cost to residents, the city, or the county.
It’s been three years since Toledo privatized trash collection and Lucas County hired a private firm. Ron Volk, chairman of the Toledo-Lucas County Commission on Disabilities, said the service would not be sufficient if more people such as Ms. Kajfasz requested help. Helping the disabled with trash is required, Mr. Volk said, and neither Toledo nor Lucas County addressed the issue formally when they signed a contract for refuse collection in 2011.
Ohio’s three largest cities use city employees to collect trash, and each has established programs to help the disabled. But in Toledo, officials said it’s not the city’s responsibility.
Toledo Law Director Adam Loukx and Lucas County Assistant Prosecutor James Walter traded terse letters recently over the matter.
The city claimed the county is responsible because it holds the contract with Republic, and the county said it is using the same service through Triad that was employed by Toledo prior to 2011.
Hillary Moore, adult day-services director of Triad, said the group helps about 100 Toledoans, and that number is the maximum it can handle. So people like Mr. Volk fear what will happen if everyone eligible for help requests it.
For more than a year, the local U.S. Attorney’s Office has conducted a compliance review under the Americans with Disabilities Act of trash removal in the city.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Angelita Cruz Bridges — who wrote to the Lucas County Commissioners in August, 2013, asking for information on trash collection and then sent Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins a letter last month requesting similar information — did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Paul Rasmusson of Republic Services in Erie, Mich., which holds the county contract to collect Toledo refuse, said other communities made sure to address the issue contractually.
“It’s a newer issue that has arisen with the ADA laws and regulations,” Mr. Rasmusson said. “Some communities have had it built into their contracts for years, like Maumee and Sylvania who handle it on their own. ... They say there are so many people in a community that require the services so you know what you are bidding on.”
Republic employees move trash from the house to the curb in Maumee and Sylvania.
The contract with the county was “mute to that point,” he said.
Mr. Rasmusson said he hasn’t seen the kind of dispute raging between Toledo and Lucas County regarding trash collection for the disabled anywhere else in the nation.
“No one is saying anywhere that someone has requested this and has been turned away or denied,” he said.
Kerstin Sjoberg-Witt, director of advocacy for Disability Rights Ohio, said cities and counties are required to provide equal access to all programs and services under federal law.
“It’s going to be an individualized determination for each person,” Ms. Sjoberg-Witt said. “It’s not a matter of saying I have a handicap placard and therefore I need X.”
Cleveland spokesman Daniel Ball said the city collects trash from 152,000 households and about 200 people receive the extra help.
“They contact us and we verify the person is handicapped; a doctor must sign off on it,” Mr. Balll said. “We also make accommodations for the elderly. The crews wheel cans from the backyards, and we will empty them.”
Rick Tilton, Columbus assistant director of public service, said more than 1,100 elderly and disabled customers in the state capital receive a similar service.
“All we ask them to do is to contact our customer service line or go online, and we send them a questionnaire and blank doctor statement for their doctor to fill out,” Mr. Tilton said. “It’ll be noted on the drivers’ routes, and the driver gets out of his or her truck, rolls the carts down to the truck, and empties.”
Gerald Checco, Cincinnati director of public services, said that his city also requires a doctor’s note. Three hundred Cincinnati residents use the service, he said.
Two dozen Bowling Green residents get help from city trash collectors in that Wood County city, said Brian Craft, public works director.
“If people write me a letter and back it up with a disability placard and a doctor’s note ... our drivers will get out of the truck, bring the container to the curb, dump it, and return the container,” Mr. Craft said. “We feel it’s an extension of helping people out. Do I feel there are a few in there stretching it out? Sure, but it’s not worth ruffling the feathers of the big picture of it all.”
Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171 or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.
First Published October 27, 2014, 4:00 a.m.
