News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Yes, FCC Environmental needs to sharpen up its trash collection game in Buncombe, and it’s working on it • Asheville Watchdog
If I’ve learned anything in three decades as an observer of local governments, it’s this: Don’t mess with residents’ garbage service.
More precisely, don’t mess up garbage pickups. People really, really, really don’t like it when their trash doesn’t get hauled off.
And since FCC Environmental took over garbage collection in Buncombe County at the start of the year, it’s had a lot of problems. I know the county has heard a lot of the complaints, and so have I.
Here’s a taste of what’s hit my inbox:
“Can you find what is going on with FCC Environmental?” Leicester resident Tom Leonard wrote. “They are missing my pickup, and when I call to complain I get a help center in Colorado and all they can do is take my information and pass the ticket along. I also filed a complaint with the county on their website. They missed me completely last week, and just got the trash this week. To make matters worse, WastePro didn’t pick up my recycling at the end of December, so I have over five weeks of recycling piling up here. I just got off the phone again and got the same call center in Colorado. Can you find out what is going on there, and if they even have a plan to clean up this mess they created? There are 38 homes in the development I live in (I’m in Leicester) and we all have overflowing bins sitting by the road … waiting.”
County resident Chip Boyd was even more blunt:
“You may already be on this one, but the new waste collection contractor for Buncombe County has started out by falling flat on their face. If you look at social media like nextdoor.com and Facebook, you’ll see hundreds and hundreds of people whose trash has not been collected for weeks. The county government is not responsive, FCC’s phone lines are either closed or have a 30-minute plus wait time, and emails go unanswered. I, for example, have not had a single pickup since they took over. Of course, one expects there to be some birthing pains as a new contractor takes over, but this looks to be much, much worse. Personally, I just finished hauling a month’s worth of trash and garbage in my SUV to dispose of it, so you can imagine that my attitude about this is not very positive.”
No, I imagine not.
FCC responds: ‘It’s just hard to avoid, no matter how hard you prepare’
I reached out to Charles Merkley, vice president of business development with FCC, and he told me Thursday the company is well aware of the complaints and has worked to knock them down and add personnel and equipment.
“I think the important thing is we’re here to partner with Buncombe County and the residents, and we’re doing everything we can to be able to provide them the service that they’re paying for, that they request,” Merkley said. “That’s always our mission. Always.”
He acknowledged that early in the transition FCC had received about 400 complaints. A 45-year veteran of the waste disposal industry, Merkley said all transitions into a new market come with hiccups.

“It’s just hard to avoid, no matter how hard you prepare,” Merkley said, noting that FCC did do dry runs throughout the community before taking over. “But once you actually get live and go in there, there is always something. New equipment — brand new carts we buy, they break, unfortunately.”
FCC has 43 employees in Buncombe County, including 32 drivers. The company has 32 trucks working the county, with eight additional trucks in support roles.
Asked if FCC hired former workers from Waste Pro, which previously held the garbage contract for the county, Merkley said, “Not many.”
“But we did get a lot of local, experienced people that may have worked in the industry previously,” Merkley said. “Our general manager is very, very local and very familiar with Buncombe County and the collection routing. He’s worked with other companies doing that.”
One issue has been the mountain terrain and in some cases narrow, steep roads that require specialty vehicles or four-wheel-drive trucks.
“We’ve added additional pieces of equipment over and above the scheduled routes that are scheduled, and that’s eight to 10 pieces of equipment, along with drivers,” Merkley said. “They’re coming from all over the country that are part of our startup teams.”
Some of these veteran drivers are mentoring newer FCC workers, or in some cases driving the vehicles and teaching employees the nuances of the equipment, Merkley said.
Merkley said FCC typically handles complaint calls locally but was overloaded early on.
FCC has a half-dozen people in Buncombe to handle phone calls, and the first backup for that is another center in Houston, where FCC is headquartered. Calls go to those two places first, then to Colorado, which is FCC’s “external, global call center.”
“And unfortunately, they’re trained as best they can be, but they don’t always know specific answers, and that’s why we like to do it local,” Merkley said. “And we feel very strongly that as of now, and even by towards the end of the month, that all the external calls won’t be necessary.”
By the way, Leonard emailed me Friday to say FCC made it out to his neighborhood, Newfound Estates, the day before.
“They came and got the recycling for the whole subdivision,” Leonard told me via email. “I don’t think they would have gotten it if they didn’t hear from you. Now if they pick us up on Monday, that will clear out all that I had piled up here from the last five weeks.”
Fingers crossed, Tom.
Buncombe: ‘Our community has already endured enough challenges’
Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder addressed the FCC issues at the Jan. 22 community briefing.
“We know the delays and missed pickups have been incredibly frustrating,” Pinder said. “Our community has already endured enough challenges.”
To be fair, FCC got knocked back a day last week because of icy conditions Monday, so it was finishing up pickups on Saturday instead of Friday. But Pinder acknowledged the other customer complaints.
“We have set an action plan for FCC, and our expectations are for them to maintain a 98 percent collection rate beginning Feb. 1,” Pinder said. “They have agreed to this, and they are continuing to increase staffing and resources to get the job done that we’ve hired them to do.”
I’m glad that FCC is knocking down the complaints, because Buncombe has a history of poor garbage collection service. If you’ve been here since 2010 or thereabouts and live in the unincorporated parts of Buncombe County, you probably have not-so-fond memories of Waste Pro’s startup here, and its collection woes that continued sporadically for years.

In June 2015 I wrote an article for the Citizen Times with the headline, “Buncombe trash contract to be rebid after Waste Pro issue.” The county was miffed about collection issues resulting in a deluge of complaints, “problems mostly driven by too few workers and equipment problems,” I wrote.
Back then, former Waste Pro spokesman Ron Pecora said the company was getting back on track after adding workers. This will sound familiar:
“We are doing everything we said we would and more in terms of people and equipment,” Pecora said in 2015. “Calls are dramatically down and we are caught up. We have made our promises and commitments, which will become obvious rather than (talking) about what we will do.”
The county and Waste Pro worked out their differences, and the contract continued through the end of last year. Buncombe chose FCC in part because the company’s rates were slightly lower than Waste Pro’s proposal.
Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Amanda Edwards told me the FCC topic is definitely on her radar — and poor service is unacceptable.
“We are working very closely with our solid waste team to get each and every one of these (complaints) addressed, and we do expect better service and better customer service for the residents of Buncombe County,” Edwards said.
I told her that some folks are really riled up, especially those with trash sitting in front of their homes for weeks.
“And that’s fair,” Edwards said. “Nobody wants that sitting outside their home or their neighborhoods.”
She told me that for any FCC-related email that comes to all of the commissioners, the board’s clerk is on the case.
“She is working with the Solid Waste team to address each and every one of them,” Edwards said. “The ones that have come to me directly, I have responded to every single one of them to date, and have responded directly, and have also shared those with the Solid Waste team, who then follows up.”
She said she’s actually had some residents reach back out and thank her for responding, noting they’d heard from the Solid Waste department.
For all county residents, I’m hoping FCC has a handle on the demands of our local area, and that the service smooths out.
Meanwhile, I await your emails.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
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The post Yes, FCC Environmental needs to sharpen up its trash collection game in Buncombe, and it’s working on it • Asheville Watchdog appeared first on avlwatchdog.org
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Superior Court judge sides with Riggs against Griffin | North Carolina
SUMMARY: In the ongoing legal battle over the state Supreme Court Seat 6, Wake County Superior Court ruled against Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin, who trails incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs by 734 votes from 5.5 million cast. Griffin has not conceded, suggesting an appeal is likely. The court denied his request to discard 65,000 ballots, with previous protests rejected at both county and state levels. The litigation has progressed through various courts. Riggs, appointed to the Supreme Court in September 2023 after previously serving on the Court of Appeals, is set to begin her term unless Griffin’s appeal succeeds.
The post Superior Court judge sides with Riggs against Griffin | North Carolina appeared first on www.thecentersquare.com
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Elections in NC suffer from lack of money and little voter education
Upon further review: Commission finds that NC elections suffer from deficits and distrust
James Hardaway spent Election Night counting ballots in Wake County. With another poll worker standing behind him as a second pair of eyes, Hardaway physically checked each paper ballot, ensuring that the numbers matched those the precinct’s tabulators had been tracking all day and night. In other elections across North Carolina, similar scenes were playing out.
Afterwards, the Wake County precinct workers knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the numbers aligned, Hardaway said.
But not everyone shared that knowledge.
“That’s not good enough for someone who’s reading something on Facebook or Twitter that there are 500,000 voted ballots that are only voting for one candidate,” Hardaway said. “If you look at the raw numbers, that’s not true. But when that post gets a million views, it gets legs.”
Hardaway, an Army veteran, is one of 60 members of the Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections, a first of its kind, comprehensive review of the state’s election systems and processes.
Last week, the commission met at Catawba College to discuss its findings and recommendations after a multi-year effort. While the commission’s 11 committees covered a wide range of election topics, they arrived at two major conclusions.
First, North Carolina’s elections need more funding to operate effectively.
Second: North Carolinians do not know or understand the state’s electoral processes enough, which leads to confusion, distrust and apathy.
‘Nobody’s done this’
The Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections launched in October 2023 with a mission: increase confidence and trust in the state’s electoral process through comprehensive review. Members came from across the state and varied in age, race, gender and political affiliation.
The commission originated from an organization called the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe and Secure Elections and counts Catawba College as a partner in the effort.
It’s led by a bipartisan pair: former Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, and Bob Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice who had been a longtime Republican.
Since its inception, the commission’s 11 committees have held over 80 meetings to discuss and debate various aspects of the state’s electoral process.
The commission’s bipartisan committees looked into, among other things, North Carolina’s ballot security, election infrastructure and administration, campaign finance and voter access.
“Nobody’s done this,” Orr said. “As critical as elections are to democracy, to our state, I’m not aware of any governmental units or academic entities that have done the kind of comprehensive work that this group has.”
Voters lack trust in the elections process
For the most part, North Carolinians’ trust in elections depends on whether their preferred party wins. That’s according to a pair of surveys conducted in August 2024 and January 2025 by YouGov, a British market research company.
Over 1,000 North Carolinians were asked how confident they were in the security and integrity of North Carolina voting before — and after — the 2024 election.
In August, 71% said they believed in the voting process with Democrats expressing significantly higher confidence than Republicans — 83% to 63%.
However, after President Donald Trump won reelection, those numbers changed for members of both parties. Overall confidence rose to 80%. But Republicans’ confidence in election integrity spiked to 86% while that number for Democrats dropped slightly to 81%.
There was a starker partisan divide when respondents were asked if they thought that votes in their county would be accurately counted.
Before the election, 89% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans said they thought that the votes would be correctly tallied. But afterwards, only 75% of Democrats felt that way. The confidence of Republicans, however, skyrocketed to 86%.
Hardaway said his committee found that the doubts of voters stems from a lack of understanding. They don’t know how election technology works. They don’t trust that the ballot’s path from printing to counting is secure each step of the way. And they want more proof that voter rolls are accurate and regularly maintained.
While a great deal of information on these processes already exists publicly, in places like the State Board of Elections’ website, there’s a need to more aggressively advertise and spread the knowledge among the electorate, the committee found.
“More communication and more information is ultimately going to build confidence in the process,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
The civics education we’re missing
While there are legislative efforts to bolster civic education — including a bill introduced this session requiring UNC System institutions to require at least three credit hours in American history or government to graduate — they often focus on specific historical documents, such as the Gettysburg Address or Federalist Papers.
But there’s not much that teaches young people on how localities prepare and run elections.
Martha Kropf, a UNC-Charlotte political science professor, told the commission she once asked her college class a series of basic questions to gauge their election knowledge. Among them: Can a felon vote?
The correct answer is yes — once they’ve served their sentence, completed probation and paid any restitution.
But only 18% of her students got it right. Some were even insistent that Kropf was wrong.
The commission discussed trying to get more basic election knowledge into this session’s bill.
Civic education requires civic engagement
People who start voting at 18 tend to make civic involvement a habit throughout their life, Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said.
But the opposite is also true.
“If you get later into your life and haven’t participated or haven’t cast ballots, it’s perceivably harder to get people engaged and into a mindset of being civically engaged,” Bitzer explained.
The committee devoted to civic education found that most county election offices who responded to their survey did not have someone on staff whose job description included voter education.
Some advocated for paying non-voters, particularly those who are younger or in marginalized communities, to participate in research on what civic engagement barriers they face. Many brought up social media as a necessary tool to reach less civically-engaged North Carolinians.
Whatever the solution may be, Bitzer said it will have to start small.
“Everything in American history teaches us that oftentimes things that are fundamentally shifting … begin at the local level,” he said.
Elections and their cost
The commission noted that one area in dire need of investment is campaign finance.
Each election cycle, over 3,317 political entities are legally required to file campaign finance reports. Most have to file more than one during each cycle.
Two attorneys, six to seven auditors and one to two investigators are responsible for policing all of those reports with software that’s over 20 years old.
A commission committee found that hiring at least two more auditors, in addition to investing in modern-day software, would better hold candidates and campaign finance organizations more accountable in a timely manner.
Understaffing and outdated technology underscore the challenges. Last December, a three-plus year investigation into campaign finance violations committed during Mark Robinson’s run for lieutenant governor finally concluded.
Poll position
Funding is also needed to address critical personnel challenges in several areas of election administration, the commission found.
In the past five years, election directors in 61 of North Carolina’s 100 counties have left their jobs. A Carolina Public Press investigation found that safety concerns, increasing complexity of the job as voter policies constantly change and low pay were behind the exodus.
Minimum pay for election directors was set at $12 an hour in 1999 and hasn’t increased since.
Their responsibilities have increased exponentially since then. And now, with the passage of Senate Bill 382, they will face tighter deadlines to count provisional and absentee ballots after elections.
In addition to election directors, the supply of poll workers is suffering from a lack of funding. In 2022, 48% of North Carolina jurisdictions reported difficulty recruiting workers.
To combat that, election administrators will have to get more creative, said Leslie Garvin, executive director of an organization called North Carolina Campus Engagement.
“Has anybody seen a commercial to recruit you as a poll worker or an ad on social media or something?” she asked. “We’ve got so much access to folks now, and we need to use that.”
Where do elections go from here?
While last Tuesday was the unofficial “graduation” of the Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections, the work is far from over.
By its bipartisan nature, the commission did not reach a consensus on every issue and recommended some things for further study.
Within the next month or so, the group will present its findings and recommendations to the legislature.
In October 2023, the commission set out to answer one question, Bitzer recalled: “Can we, with confidence, say to our fellow citizens in this state that North Carolina’s election system is fair, safe and secure? Is it a good system?
“I think we can take away the answer is yes.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Amazon workers push to unionize in 6-day vote in NC
SUMMARY: This week, workers at Amazon’s rdu1 facility in Garner will begin voting on whether to unionize. An upstart union is seeking to represent over 4,000 employees, advocating for higher wages, increased paid time off, and other benefits. Currently, wages range from $18.50 to $23.80 an hour, while organizers aim for $30. Despite enjoying their work, employees feel they deserve more, citing Amazon’s substantial profits without bonuses. The National Labor Relations Board is overseeing the six-day voting process, which concludes on Saturday. If successful, this would mark Garner’s facility as only the second Amazon location in the U.S. to unionize.

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