Chicopee asks Walmart to combat trash problem linked to its Memorial Drive store - MassLive.com

CHICOPEE – Long-standing concerns about trash and police calls at Walmart’s second-busiest store in New England came to a head Monday night, with one city councilor saying it is time for owners and managers to do better.

Resident Dan Hackett said he has been dealing with the excessive trash and other problems for 15 years. At times Walmart has responded and made efforts to reduce the litter. But Hackett has now turned to the city for help, believing local store managers and corporate officials have at times ignored neighbors’ calls.

“Has Walmart ever been fined for the trash?” he asked. “I’ve been to every Walmart in New England for my job and there is no other place where the trash is so bad because the cities don’t accept it.”

A local official says the store is responding. Store manager Wendy Hubbard announced that Walmart on Monday signed a contract with a cleaning company that will have a machine scrub the parking lot of trash seven days a week, instead of the current three or four.

The issue came to a head recently when Walmart applied for permits to build a 6,315-square-foot addition to its about 223,390-square-foot building on Memorial Drive. Chicopee residents attended the public meetings, not to protest the expansion proposal but to air concerns mainly about trash.

The Planning Board, which approved a preliminary site plan in March, said it had little control over trash. But city councilors who attended the meeting said Walmart holds licenses with the city that can be suspended if problems persist.

The council’s License Committee met Monday with store officials. After discussion about solutions to multiple problems, members voted 4-0 to continue the meeting on another date and gave managers a month to get answers to six questions about different issues.

“I’m OK with fining Walmart. It’s not like they are a small business,” Councilor George Balakier said. “I think Walmart can do better.”

It isn’t just the trash. Several years ago, the Chicopee store tallied the highest volume of 911 calls to police of any Walmart nationwide. Calls included assaults, shopliftings and medical emergencies and continue to this day, with an average of 44 per month or three a day, Councilor Frank Laflamme said.

Laflamme, who has been working with neighbors, showed photographs of trash in their backyards, which they have to clean up daily, and a strip of trash-strewn land the store owns outside its fence. While he said there has been some improvements in the past month, it isn’t enough.

Hubbard, the store manager, said not all the trash is from Walmart. Laflamme countered that 90% is linked to the store. He said plastic bags with the Walmart logo become stuck in trees and are found all along Sheridan Street. He showed a photo of flyers with the store name in the wooded strip behind the fence.

City Councilor Derek Dobosz, who represents neighbors off Sheridan Street who are plagued with the trash, said the Springfield Walmart has switched to paper bags and asked if Chicopee could do the same, since much of the trash is plastic bags.

But Craig Iglesias, the market asset protection manager for Walmart stores in the region, said Springfield switched after a city ordinance was passed. Chicopee allows plastic bags.

Councilor Delmarina Lopez said switching to paper bags citywide would be detrimental to mom-and-pop stores but would cost a huge corporation like Walmart essentially nothing. “Do you understand how that (kind of ban) affects everyone, but everyone is not having an issue,” she said.

Security issues

Lopez also backed Dobosz’s argument that it is time for Walmart to hire a city police officer for a minimum of eight hours a day at the busiest time to reduce the constant police calls to the store.

The corporation hires police officers in other stores in the country. The Chicopee Walmart brings in between 7,000 and 8,000 shoppers a day, making it the second-largest store in New England. Dobosz asked why it wouldn’t consider doing so in Chicopee, where there clearly are problems.

“We require police details for events and you are essentially holding an event every single day,” Lopez said. “You have police there every single day.”

Iglesias said the store hires security firms so it can have one guard at every door, one in the parking lot and one who roams the inside of the store. It has also stopped calling police for non-felony shoplifting and instead files its own complaints in court, he said.

But he said he will ask corporate officials about adding a police detail as well as switching to paper bags.

Councilors asked the store to report back on requests to either fence in or clear brush from the strip where trash is accumulating, so neighbors are not subjected to that daily eyesore.

They also want Walmart to submit a cleaning plan, provide information on how the store prevents carts from being removed from the property and share a list of contacts so city officials can easily reach store employees about problems.

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