FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): In a three day period last week, Fort Wayne City employees picked up trash at 134 homes that were missed by the city’s long-beleaguered trash contractor.

Thirty-one workers from the Street Department hit an average of 44 homes per day, according to the Journal Gazette, last Monday through Wednesday.

Mayor Tom Henry announced in late June that city workers would step in to pick up the slack left behind by Red River Waste Solutions, which has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for missed collections since taking over the city’s trash service contract in January 2018. The Street Department workers are being paid with money collected from those fines.

While Red River continues to receive criticism from residents, things HAVE improved: in October, there were 10,000 missed pick-ups, while this past March there were 809.