By SUZANNE DOWNING
Monday morning update: The mayor has announced Monday morning that the city will start collecting the trash again.
With temperatures hovering around minus 40 degrees, Fairbanks’ new mayor, Mindy O’Neill, has gone snowflake: She has suspended residential garbage collection, telling residents it is too cold for municipal crews to work and advising them to haul their own trash to the landfill.
The decision follows an earlier controversy this winter, when the mayor ordered crews to stop snow plowing during a cold snap, also citing temperature concerns. Longtime residents say they cannot recall a Fairbanks mayor canceling either road plowing or garbage pickup because of cold weather, conditions that are routine for Interior Alaska.
Sanitation workers will continue to be paid during the suspension. When collection resumes, expected next week, crews are anticipated to work extended shifts to catch up, triggering overtime pay under union contracts. The approach benefits city unions that backed O’Neill’s election while leaving residents to manage growing piles of trash during one of the coldest periods of the year.
The mayor addressed the issue in a social media monologue, saying the cold posed safety risks and that residents could take garbage directly to the landfill in the meantime. The message did little to calm frustration across the city, where some households lack vehicles capable of hauling refuse in extreme winter conditions.
In response, residents have begun organizing grassroots efforts. Volunteers on Facebook say they are coordinating limited garbage pickup using private vehicles and trailers. While acknowledging they cannot cover the entire city, organizers say removing even a quarter of the accumulated trash is better than leaving neighborhoods with none collected at all.
Concerns are growing about sanitation and public health as garbage accumulates near homes and businesses.
Fairbanks has long prided itself on functioning through harsh winters that would shut down cities elsewhere. For many locals, the latest decision has become a symbol of soft Democrat leadership has lowered the expectations in Alaska’s coldest city.
19 thoughts on “First it was too cold to plow, now mayor of Fairbanks says it’s too cold to pick up trash”
If it’s unsafe for municipal workers who, by law, must be provided with safety equipment to perform their jobs then how is it safe to individual citizens who fund the municipality through their tax dollars with the promise of services provided?
Steve-O For gawd’s sake, stay inside and nibble on Cheezits in the cold and dark. It is clearly not safe out there.
Evan, thanks for representing the new breed of spinless men.
The little commie mayor of Fairbanks is no less a dictator than the Venezuelan drug lord. She is brainwashed with left-wing goop from her younger days. The ONLY reason she is in the mayor’s seat is because the previous mayor is a dumb-sh*t with a microphone and a huge plate of barbeque ribs.
Well said! I can picture this kid with a Man Bun eating Togu!
Steve-O I wonder if the city will refund all their trash customers for the days they did not get their trash collected and will pay them a nuisance fee for having to take it themselves? Furthermore do you have to pay at the transfer station or landfill to dispose of your refuse?
What about commercial entities, who generate trash you can not “transport yourself”? Will they get a break on the fee?
What’s next? No police and fire when it is -30 F or below?
We used to live in the North Pole area, kids went to school at -54 F, the mail came every day and the roads got plowed, in other words life went on….
Just leave it all in the mayor’s front yard. That should deliver a message.
What an in-your-face scam.
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Invent an excuse for not picking up trash, then get overtime for picking up mountains of accumulated trash.
.
Got to be legal recourse or creative means of protest to hit back.
If there’s one thing Mindy O’Neill is well known for, it’s her lack of intellect. No common sense whatsoever. Residents should all drop off their garbage on the sidewalk in front of 800 Cushman street. Don’t worry, Im sure it will be too cold for FPD to issue citations for littering.
So it’s too cold 🥶 for borough employees to pick up refuse but not too cold for residents to take it themselves into the landfill?
A little irony.
What will she’ll do for someone with limited mobility issues and they can still take care of themselves without a caregiver but they rarely drive or tenants and homeowners without a vehicle?
Fairbanks Democrat voters these hardships are on you for voting the warm climate leftist into one of Alaska’s coldest regions.
This is what happens when government employers and business owners hires people recently moved to Alaska from the states. They can’t handle or put up with the cold like native-born and raised Alaskans (not just talking about indigenous peoples but all born and raised Alaskans)
My age has gotten to the point I don’t do as well in the cold. But I prepare and put up with it.
Fairbanks borough employees need to do what I do and prepare and put up with the freezing temperature. They are lucky they are not hobos. I feel the most sorry for them than for me or anyone else who can get out of the cold.
To be honest this “ , residents have begun organizing grassroots efforts. Volunteers on Facebook say they are coordinating limited garbage pickup using private vehicles and trailers”
This why Alaska leaders are not held accountable and responsible for their incompetency becsuse of Alaskans volunteer attitude that they will pick up their leaders slack or find a harder worker to do the work of a lazy worker.
We are witness the harvest of Democrats in Fairbanks that Fairbanks is no longer a Republican stronghold. They lost it. Fairbanks is Anchorage controlled by Democrats and they got the people cleaning up the mess of their lazy leaders, just like Anchorage residents are ckeaning up the messes left behind poor Democrat leaders.
Mindy O’Neill is not a mental giant, nor a business person qhich also takes some mental acuity, but has grifted off of government money, since she arrived in Alaska. Her time on the Borough Assembly she spent spending high and wide as much as possible and is now Faurbanks’ Mayor. Look out City folks, you won’t have any savings and your taxes will go up if she can make it happen. No fiscal responsibility!
This is why I continue to remind Alaskans are Government dependent. If it wasn’t for Government funded jobs. Most Alaskans will not have a job.
To Rightsize Alaska Government and government spending, we’d lose tens of thousands of Alaska residents in its beginning of a new dramatic change from big government to limited government and private sector growth. It would be very lean years for the Alaskans sticking out the change.
It looks like the announcement was made on jan.31. According to the fairbanks web site trash pick up is Monday through Wednesday. I must be missing something as it does not appear to be much of an interruption to service yet. Forecast is for warner temperatures. Not seeing a union conspiracy here. I was working in Prudhoe Bay in 1989 when they shut down construction projects and flew everyone home due to extended cold -40.
You left out that this Mayor ONeill will have the union paid employees still receiving their hours while she sends Fairbanks residents out into the cold to the landfill. There is no logic in that. If it’s too cold for employees then why she thinks it’s not too cold for residents?
-40 in FAI is a helluva lot different than -40 on the beach, where the winds compound the cold and drop efficiency well-below the worth of de minimus production. When FAI hits those temps, the air is normally DFC (calm) and it’s reasonably easy to get around. Not fun, but I did my walks in the minus 50-55 F range those many decades ago. I survived just walking; those fellas should be humping it to get the trash into the compactors and thus well-able to deal with this.
That said, some of that iron would appear to be pretty old and has certainly seen its share of cold weather. The real sin here, is paying people to stay home. What a damned insult to tax and rate payers.
So glad I live outside of the city. Otherwise all of my empty bottles of cheap whiskey would be out there in the icefog for public display. Since I’m getting really short on ideas for future interest articles, I’m now accepting ideas from the good people at Alaska Story. Donations always accepted too. My livelihood is down to the last couple bottles and my Democrat friends are crashing my comment section with the same old back-patting crap. I need new friends……..quick.
HUGE LOL……🤣🤣
Ever consider pushing daisies as an alternative?
Spot on.
I believe both the City of Fairbanks and the FNSBorough are simply playing pothole – tell DOT their budget request is being trimmed, and they quit filling potholes; wait for public to scream at assembly; assembly asks why no pothole filling; DOT says we don’t have enough money; assembly asks how much needed & writes check… everybody happy but taxpayer. ALL bureaucracies do this. Weather is just an excuse – I want to know where the money is really going.