About a third of Sea Coast Disposal’s customers are scheduled to have their garbage collection stopped on Wednesday due to nonpayment.

A total of 1,301 accounts are scheduled to be cancelled, according to Steven Hendrieth, the city of Selma’s waste accounts coordinator. Unfortunately, this isn’t a new problem for Selma.

The city’s last waste management company, Advanced Disposal, had trouble getting customers to pay their bill.

Advanced elected not to renew its garbage contract in 2015, saying then that half of its 6,000 customers weren’t paying their bills.

To be frank, this is embarrassing.

Sea Coast serves 4,872 customers in Selma, which is counting 844 exempt accounts.

Apparently, a third of those customers either don’t pay their bill or have forgotten.

Hendrieth told the Selma City Council last week that the non-payments represent a $112,000 loss for Sea Coast.

The good news for those that haven’t paid is that there’s still time. Customers that haven’t paid their garbage bills need to do so immediately so that they can ensure their service isn’t stopped on Wednedsay.

Sea Coast even opened up Saturday to give customers another day to pay.

During the council meeting, it was mentioned that poor service might be part of the reason customers aren’t paying their bills.

While that might be true, poor service is not an excuse for not paying a bill.

With that said, anyone that has a complaint about Sea Coast needs to make it known because the company doesn’t get many calls, according to president Matt Brigance.

He said Sea Coast gets about 40 inbound calls each week, and Brigance said most are related to billing questions. When there is a complaint, Brigance said the company logs them so that they can improve.

We hope most customers, if not all, get their accounts paid up by the beginning of this week. If not, many customers in Selma will be without garbage service next week.