BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

INEZ — A complaint about missed garbage pickups turned into a reckoning over code enforcement in the April 1 meeting of the Martin County Solid Waste Code Enforcement Board.

Residents, officials and law enforcement questioned whether haulers are meeting contract requirements and whether the board and code enforcement are doing enough.

At the center of the discussion was Inez resident Timothy Thoma, who read a prepared letter to the Martin County Solid Waste Code Enforcement Board detailing repeated problems with his residential trash service through Country Boys I LLC.

Thoma said he moved to Martin County in March 2023 and quickly came to love the area.

“As sure as I’m standing here, I can tell that God brought me to this place,” Thoma said.

But he told the board that trash pickup, while “somewhat reliable” at first, has deteriorated over the past six months.

“In December 2025, I was forced to take my trash to the transfer station myself,” Thoma said. “My December trash had accumulated for several weeks, with no pickup or not knowing when pickup would occur. I continued to pay my bill every month as required under the Martin County ordinance.”

He said service in February and March became “sporadic based on either weather issues or truck breakdowns.”

Thoma said he understands weather delays.

“I get that,” he said. “I want people to be safe when they’re doing their job, but what I can’t understand is truck breakdowns.”

Thoma obtained a copy of his hauler’s contract with the county and said he believes the company is violating it in multiple ways.

Reading the contract, Thoma cited provisions requiring the contractor to provide an adequate number of vehicles. He noted that the vehicles must conform to the American National Standards Institute standard Z245.1.

“All vehicles and other equipment must be kept in proper repair and sanitary condition,” Thoma said. “Each vehicle shall bear the name and phone number of the contractor plainly visible on both cab doors and shall have a copy of the permit issued by the solid waste coordinator. Each truck shall have at least one broom and shall clean up solid waste that may be spilled or otherwise scattered during the process of collection.”

He continued by citing language requiring vehicles to be sufficiently secured to prevent littering and fluid leakage, prohibiting willful overloading and requiring contractors to clean up any spilled or scattered waste.

“All open-type collection vehicles, as opposed to packers, shall be covered during movement,” Thoma read.

“Country Boys I LLC, through its own company Facebook page and notification of customers, has shown it is not abiding by this requirement.”

Thoma added that the truck serving his route does not have a cover.

“There’s not even a back gate on that truck,” he said.

He also told the board that vehicles with obstructed rear views must have backup alarms.

Thoma asked the board to require a timely formal response from the contractor and, if the response does not address the problem, to send the matter to Martin County Fiscal Court with a recommendation that Country Boys I LLC be found in default of its contract.

He also requested inspections of all collection vehicles countywide, audits of all haulers and records showing collection dates, weights and transfers to verify compliance with federal, state and local laws and ordinances.

“I question whether those inspections and findings are being done,” Thoma said. “Because if they’re being done, why am I seeing what I’m seeing?”

The contract requires two free days for bulk and oversized waste removal, but Thoma said that he has never seen those services advertised.

“In my time here in the county, I have not seen that,” Thoma said.

Then Thoma widened his criticism beyond his own service.

“Now here is the part that I find just as troubling,” Thoma said. “As I drive around our beautiful county, I come across properties that are clearly in violation of our garbage and nuisance ordinance. I ask myself the fundamental question, ‘Why?’”

He noted that the solid waste board has been in service for about two years and then read from a Sept. 23, 2023, Mountain Citizen story quoting Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty during discussion of the ordinance’s first reading.

“One of the promises I made is that we’re going to clean up the county. And we’ve always said we need to do something to clean up our county,” Lafferty said in the story that Thoma read aloud. “If you don’t have a clean county, it’s almost impossible to have economic development.”

“I agree with that statement,” Thoma said. “I want to know from the code enforcement board why, two years later, we find ourselves asking, ‘Why is this still happening?’ I don’t expect that question to be answered tonight, but I do expect it to be answered. And I think you already know the answer. I think I know the answer.”

Thoma also raised concerns about a document he received from his hauler, saying it did not explain what the customer was supposed to do with it.

“You would think that as a business owner, if you’re going to send something like this to a customer, there should be a slip in there or a piece of paper or something that says, ‘You, as a customer, here’s your responsibility and what you’re supposed to do with this,’” he said. “What am I supposed to do with this? I have no idea; it doesn’t tell me. Do they want me to keep track of my own garbage, what they’re picking up and when? I don’t know.”

Still, he said, he understands that people are trying to make a living.

“Everybody is trying to do the best they can with what they have,” Thoma said. “I get that. But when you run a business, you’ve got to run a business in a professional manner, so the customer is receiving a couple of things. It doesn’t matter whether this is sanitation or water, garbage, it doesn’t matter. Customers want professional service in a timely manner and at an affordable price. That’s what everybody wants, and that’s all I’m asking for. But more importantly, I think we need to hold our contractors accountable.”

Board chair Greg Murphy told Thoma the board would send a letter to the contractor and address the complaint. Murphy suggested giving the contractor 14 days to respond, but Thoma noted that the contract specifies 10 days.

“We don’t mind giving a little bit of time, if it takes just a little bit longer, because it’s difficult here,” board member Deresa MacDonald said. “Very difficult, I think, here.”

MacDonald said she could not recall which hauler serves her own home.

“I just pay for it and put it out, and I never complain,” she said. “But I’m not saying you don’t have valid complaints … We will try to address it.”

At that point, Thoma explained what a delayed pickup means at his house.

He has a long driveway and takes his can to the roadside the night before pickup, tying it to a tree so it will not blow away once it is empty.

“I don’t like for my garbage to sit down there for two, three, four, five days, a week,” Thoma said.

He added that he refuses to leave the can at the roadside because he considers it an eyesore and believes it could attract animals and create other problems.

MacDonald attributed some of the difficulty regarding trucks breaking down to the region.

“In Eastern Kentucky, sometimes it’s hard to get a knowledgeable person to fix it in a timely manner,” she said.

She assured Thoma that the board would address the complaint. However, she cautioned that it may ultimately need to go before the Fiscal Court.

“It may not be as quick as we’d like, but we will address it,” MacDonald said. “We will do our best to get it taken care of.”

The discussion then broadened into other properties and enforcement concerns across the county.

Jim Mineer of Debord appeared before the board after receiving a warning to clean up trash from property that he owns. He told the board he had renters who accumulated household garbage on the property, but that he evicted them in December. Since then, he said, he has been trying to clean up the place.

“I promise we will get it cleaned up,” Mineer said. “We just need time to do it.”

Code enforcement officer update

The board asked code enforcement officer Tony Preece for an update on his work. Preece said he had received “several complaints” and that he had issued “three or four notices of violation.”

“So far they’ve improved, all but one,” Preece said. “She’s got one more 14-day notice.”

Preece said some problem properties have shown progress, including one near the former Mountain City Chevrolet dealership, where owners had begun cleaning up after receiving notices. He said he is also working on properties on Blacklog, Coldwater, New Route 3, Route 2032 in the curve at Smith Cemetery and Hardin Bottom.

Regarding one property near the Dollar Store, Preece said the owner had a death in the family and later cancer surgery, delaying cleanup efforts.

According to Preece, one property owner said the state advised that she could keep refuse on her porch, but not in the yard.

Assistant County Attorney Lynette Muncy said the county would need to investigate and document any potential health hazard in such cases.

Tomahawk resident Gina Patrick told the board many people do not understand the ordinance as written.

“You have to simplify it,” Patrick said. “I’m no Einstein; I want it in plain English.”

Patrick also said more people might pay for garbage service if haulers sent monthly bills.

Preece noted that when customers do not pay, haulers must continue pickup for 90 days and then file a complaint for theft of services.

“They’re not doing that,” Preece said. “They’re cutting them off after a month.”

Murphy told the audience that every household must pay for garbage service and that property owners are responsible for ensuring renters pay monthly trash bills. However, the ordinance does not contain that language. Instead, it states that “all generators of solid waste in Martin County shall utilize the collection program provided by the county.”

Preece said another problem is business owners bringing garbage from their homes to dispose of it in business dumpsters.

Murphy commented that the board needs more help.

“Judge Lafferty tried to get the constables to go out in these districts and try to help with this,” Murphy said. “To my knowledge, not a one of them has done anything. If they have, they haven’t brought it in front of us.”

Board member Rossalene Cox raised an issue about a property on Route 2032-Little Rockcastle Road near the entrance to Smith Cemetery.

“I don’t know why they haven’t done something about that,” Cox said. “They throw their garbage off their porch, over the hill. There’s no bin, to my knowledge. I’ve never seen a bin by the road. Why hasn’t somebody who is supposed to be collecting money from them done something about it?”

One audience member said that would be the board’s responsibility, not the hauler’s.

Sheriff provides blunt assessment

That led Sheriff John Kirk to offer one of the evening’s bluntest assessments.

He said he sees the trash problem across the county and showed board members photos of properties where his office recently issued citations for criminal littering.

“Say you’re someone wanting to put a factory in here, and you see all that,” Kirk said. “You’re going to think, ‘These people have no work ethic.’ You’ve got garbage in the front yard; you’ve got a burn pile here. Why would someone want to invest here? I wouldn’t.”

Kirk also said haulers cannot afford to pick up garbage for people who do not pay.

“Look at their trucks,” he said. “They’re worn out because they can’t afford to buy new trucks. You have all these people who are not paying. You have as many not paying as you have paying. It costs the same amount to drive by 50 houses with 50 houses paying as it costs to drive by 50 houses with 20 houses paying. We’ve got to get tough on these people and say, ‘You’re going to abide by the law or you’re going to be in court every month.’”

Kirk said some places where mobile homes had been torn down “look like a bomb went off,” but no one is enforcing the ordinance.

MacDonald responded that the board could enforce, prompting Murphy to counter that the board cannot act on issues that never come before it.

“If we don’t have it in front of us, there’s nothing we can do about it, John,” Murphy said.

“We’ve got it all over the county,” Kirk replied.

Kirk said he has driven the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork River and looked across at dumped garbage along the riverbank behind homes in Martin County.

“When the river gets up, it takes it down,” he said.

Cox said Martin County has been trying to clean up the problem for at least 50 years. She recalled teaching fifth grade during the era of Ray Fields’ green boxes and taking students out to pick up trash in hopes of changing a generation’s habits.

“And we’re back worse than we were 50 years ago,” Cox said.

Kirk pointed to illegal dumpsites that were cleaned with grant money, only to be used again.

“It was cleaned up a year or two ago and they’ve already started dumping again,” Kirk said of Trace Ridge.

Muncy explains legal process

Murphy asked whether the sheriff could bring cases before the board. Muncy explained that it is the code enforcement officer’s job to bring issues to the code enforcement board. The sheriff handles criminal cases, she added, but each can refer cases to the other.

Muncy said when criminal littering cases reach court and offenders have not been paying for garbage service, Martin County Attorney Melissa Phelps makes them pay the hauler a year in advance.

“We’ve had people who just refused to pay even when they were held in contempt of court,” Muncy said. “And the judge wouldn’t put them in jail, even though they are in contempt of court over and over and over again. There are different means to enforce it. We just have to have the chutzpa to get up and start doing it instead of looking to somebody else.”

Muncy said there is a process for code enforcement.

“I feel we are not understanding the process,” she said. “Whenever there is an issue, call the judge’s office. They fill out a form and give it to [Preece]. [Preece] goes out and investigates.”

Call 298-2800 to start the process.

“If you know of people, call it in. You don’t have to leave your name,” Muncy said.