Here's how I understand it. A line item in the Brattleboro town budget has been entered stating that the town of Brattleboro will adopt the pay as you throw system. For those of you not paying attention that would mean that for every bag of garbage you put by the curbside you would pay $2.00 per bag – which of course you’ll need to buy ahead of time in lots of 10 or 20. As opposed the "free/included in your astronomical property taxes" curbside pick-up you receive now. You would need to purchase these bags at some predetermined pickup point and use only those bags.

This system has been examined and actually voted down once. But our town select board (well, to be fair only three of them) have decided that they want it in the budget and they want it passed. If the budget passes, then pay as you throw passes. I have to say I'm not a fan. I pay what I consider to be an exorbitant tax rate and one of the things I enjoy for my money is dragging my stinky garbage to the curb ever Sunday night then taking my empty trash can back to it's rightful spot on my property. And I enjoy because don’t have to seek out a special trash bag and I don't have to pay $2.00 for that bag.

The hang-up is born from a $338,000 line item that the town pays for curbside pickup. They are entering the item into the town budget under the guise that they want to increase recycling. Where that may be true in part I don’t buy it as a whole! It’s strictly a move to reduce the financial burden from the town. But let’s say the average person tosses one bag of garbage a week – the annual cost for them would be $104.00 per year. Or what about the single person that lives alone and probably doesn’t accumulate a bag every two weeks. That should smell nice on a nice hot August day. Will this promote illegal dumping in the outlying rural areas? What about the tried and true old school method of burning it? These are all problems.

But the biggest problem is the assault on the checkbook. Here in Brattleboro the medium income is $32,000 per year (before taxes). Folks making this kind of money will find it a hard ship to layout $20.00 for ten bags when that same $20.00 will put food on the table. Some of our select board thinks this is not a problem. I think some of our select board need to pull their heads out of their respective gluteus maximus and look beyond their neighbor’s house. This is a financial hardship for folks. But they (again only talking about three of them) don’t care. Because even if we’re successful in getting it pulled from the town budget it’s rumored that they will not return the $338,000 to the budget for trash removal, there by force us to… you guessed it – pay as you throw. All I can say is we need to get loud about this, because if they do that it’s going to take 20% of the registered voters to remove select board members. And with only 16% showing up to the polls in the last election it doesn’t seem likely.

Our last select board developed a what I called a gang of three mentality, so the towns people on of Brattleboro spoke and selected some new folks. But it looks like we’re back where we started, with only three people making the decision for 12,000.

But there is a simpler solution. If you work strictly from the registered voter numbers and divided the $338,000 by the registered voters it works out to be roughly $37.00 per person per year. Or about $9.00 per quarter, or $3.00 per month. If they raised taxes for Brattleborians by $37.00 per year folks could just go about their lives and the town would be saved this major inconvenience of pay as you throw. But that’s just me talking… did someone say Mayoral system?