By: Dean Vaglia | Macomb Chronicle | Published July 22, 2025
MACOMB TOWNSHIP — After more than a year of continuous service issues, Macomb Township joins a growing number of southeastern Michigan communities seeking answers and alternatives to Priority Waste’s residential garbage collection.
The Macomb Township Board of Trustees — by a unanimous, five-member vote lacking Township Clerk Kristi Pozzi and Trustee Peter Lucido III — decided it would issue a notice of default and give the Clinton Township-based sanitation company a public hearing at its Wednesday, Aug. 13 meeting. The notice and hearing open the door to further action from the township.
“I have, thus far in my four-and-a-half years as township supervisor, successfully worked through a lot of issues with a lot of different township contractors and vendors,” Township Supervisor Frank Viviano said. “I have treated them all like a partner. I am honest with them, and one thing I expect in return is honest communication back, and that has been a successful recipe to working through problems. The communication between us and Priority, I believe, has broken down, and in my discussion with other community leaders, I think that sentiment is shared.”
Priority has had an eye on hauling Macomb Township’s trash since it attempted to become the township’s hauler during the spring 2023 contract bidding process. Priority had set its base rate for most residents over the five-year contract at $1,123.20, which lost out to GFL Environmental’s $1,098.48 rate. A last-minute attempt to change the trustees’ decision — a dozen Priority representatives attended the decisive meeting on May 10, 2023 — proved fruitless. Priority Waste became the township’s waste hauler about a year later after it bought service contracts from GFL in the summer of 2024.
“We knew that it would be a bumpy transition,” Viviano said. “I made a number of statements to the public to be patient, trying to urge everyone to give (Priority) an opportunity to get their feet underneath them. They effectively ... increased the scope of their business by a factor of 10, maybe more. They took on over 70 communities’ trash service all on the same day last year. I don’t know who thought that was a great idea, but amongst my peers we had strong reservations about anybody’s — not just Priority’s — ability to take on that much business at once.”
The initial months of the transition were notably plagued by various issues across communities, though Viviano noted things had improved by the fall of 2024 despite “their billing (being) a nightmare” and how phone customer service “has always been bad since they took over.” But Viviano says service began to nosedive around May 2025 and the township has noticed issues such as trucks having a single operator and trash routes being left unfinished. Viviano says the township has been bombarded with “over 50 (calls) a day” about Priority’s service issues and that multiple departments have had to field those calls.
“My staff at the treasurer’s department are used to taking phone calls about taxes and water rates, and now we’re being inundated by calls about garbage pickup, and that’s not what my staff is used to answering,” Macomb Township Treasurer Leon Drolet said. “We have contracts with other vendors in the township … and those people are responsive. I don’t get (inundated with calls) that the lawns are not being mowed in the township parks.”
Promises for better service and new trucks from Priority Waste CEO Todd Stamper have, according to Viviano, gone without the results to back them up. In one instance, Viviano and Pozzi were allegedly misled about the status of incoming equipment around late June. Both officials spoke with Stamper, who told them Priority accepted 50 new trucks that would be rushed into service the next day.
“I said, ‘I need to say that publicly,’ and (Stamper) said, ‘Go ahead,’” Viviano said. “And so I did. And I look like a fool for believing him. I apologize to anybody who took that message at face value. I took the message that was given to me at face value, as I do with all of our partners. However, for whatever reason, that proved not to be the case.”
Around 10 days after the call, Viviano learned via an email from Stamper that the trucks had to be processed and that only 28 of the claimed 50 were delivered. Viviano said he was left unsure how many, if any, would be put into service on Macomb Township routes.
“I delivered false information, and I take full responsibility for taking (Priority) at face value,” Viviano said. “I should know by now to verify it, and I didn’t.”
By sending out the notice of default and setting the public hearing date, the township is beginning the contractually outlined process to allow it to begin issuing “liquidated damages costs. If no improvement to service is noted during the 30-day period and once the public hearing is completed, the township can begin issuing fees to Priority as a penalty for performance failures. This can take the form of a $35-per failure to pick up fee every time a residence has its service skipped — similar to what neighboring Clinton Township has been utilizing for Priority’s service lapses there — or a flat $500 fee for each notice issued. The labor involved in tracking the $35 fee would be sizable, with Viviano saying Clinton Township uses eight department of public works employees for this task.
Talk of getting a new waste hauler on an emergency basis was floated, with Viviano expecting a high cost and a changed level of service. While smaller townships may be able to work with smaller waste haulers — Harrison Township has switched to Tringali Sanitation — Viviano expects only a larger hauler like Waste Management would be capable of replacing Priority.
The board’s unanimous vote came after six residents spoke out against Priority’s service at the first public comment section, and comments from trustees backed up their votes to put the waste hauler on notice.
“It’s sad to see,” Trustee Charlie Oliver said. “We all depended on a company to do something. This company said they were going to do it, and they epically failed. This board … has done everything they could to get this company motivated, but it seems like there’s a lot of things that are very untruthful when you start really diving into it, from what this company tells our supervisor and does not do.”
On July 21, Priority Waste put out the following statement to the Macomb Township Chronicle after speaking with Macomb Township and other communities that had issues with the Priority’s service:
“Priority Waste met with the leadership of Macomb and Clinton Townships, as well as the leadership of the City of Sterling Heights, last week regarding the service delays that have periodically affected the communities throughout June. Fortunately, the delays are subsiding.
“A year ago, Priority communicated to all of our newly acquired service areas from GFL that new trucks were ordered to replace a large portion of their failing fleet. The new trucks are now arriving months earlier than expected. Priority has taken delivery of 50 new service trucks in July to retire the oldest and most battered fleet vehicles that were purchased from GFL, with more on the way.
“The aging trucks showed their true colors during the spring compost season when Macomb County was hit with several severe weather events, a high heat index of 105° for several days in a row, and two holiday service shifts. All of those issues created a synergistic effect on the areas that were hardest hit.
“We appreciate the patience and understanding of those affected by the service delays, and Priority’s hard-working men and women thank the residents for their support as we return to normal service.”