JAY – The Board of Selectpersons moved to advance an amended recycling and waste ordinance to the voters in April 2018, incorporating recommendations from the Solid Waste Committee and attendees of a recent board meeting.
Voters at the 2018 town meeting in April will vote on the amended ordinance, which was originally passed in 2011. Alterations include limiting curbside pickup to apartment buildings with five or fewer dwelling units, as well as not picking up trash from hotels, restaurants, warehouses, grocery stores, industrial sites, the school district or medical facilities. These limits effectively mirror where the town’s contractor, Archie’s, currently picks up solid waste and recyclables; Jay does not have an apartment building with six or more dwellings that uses curbside, for example.
Other, more stringent limits that included trailer parks, apartments with fewer dwellings, food vendors and businesses within residences, are not included in the amendments. Those limits, originally proposed by the Solid Waste Committee, were dropped after the Nov. 28 Selectboard meeting, at which a number of residents argued that commercial businesses and housing paid taxes and should be treated the same as other property owners.
The amended ordinance would also eliminate the clear bag requirement for trash – Jay has not enforced that requirement ever since it stopped selling clear bags. While the initiative was designed to improve recycling rates by allowing easy visual inspection of trash, what instead happened was that non-transparent bags left on the curb simply became a nuisance. Town officials were typically contacted when that occurred, followed by the police. In the end, bags generally had to be hauled off anyway.
The ordinance does allow the board to reinstate clear bag requirements in the future. Recyclables in Jay are processed by single-sort and therefore no bag is used at all – recyclables are left in a bin by the curb.
The amended ordinance is the first step of the town’s review of its curbside pickup and transfer station operations. Town officials hope to approve the new ordinance in April 2018 and also get a vote on funding curbside pickup; that expense will be appearing as a separate warrant article for $123,000. Assuming curbside is funded in 2018, the service would be put out to bid in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. For this incoming budget process, the town would continue to utilize Archie’s.
Another proposal is to combine the Public Works Department and Transfer Station budgets together, similar to how grounds and cemetery budgets were combined last year. The committee has recommended that one full-time employee work at the transfer station, assisted by Public Works employees.
The vote to approved the amended ordinance and set it before residents at the April 2018 meeting was 4 to 1. Selectperson Gary McGrane was opposed, saying that he disagreed with some aspects of the amendment. He also suggested the Solid Waste Committee review the proposed ordinance.
The board did unanimously approve another Solid Waste Committee proposal, raising fees associated with the disposal of tires. The fee was increased from $2 to $3 for passenger vehicle tires, from $10 to $13 for truck tires size 20-inches and larger, and from 10-cents per pound to 15-cents per pound for off-road tires. Tires with rims still attached with cost $3 extra to dispose.
