An abbreviated Brattleboro Selectboard had an extended special meeting to primarily discuss Pay As You Throw. Donna Macomber was absent, and David Schoales left midway through.
New information revealed that our new trash bags will be color coded (colors undisclosed) with drawstring enclosures at top.
Also new, that bags will be sold about town in packs of five or ten. A 5-pack of small, 15 gallon bags will cost, at $2 each, ten dollars. For the larger 32 gallon bags, a 5-pack will cost, at $3 each, fifteen dollars. Ten packs will then cost $20 and $30.
Individual bags will be sold at the Municipal Center and at the Gibson-Aiken Center.
The rest of the meeting was, for the most part, a review of earlier PAYT information. Eight different recommendations were discussed, and a ninth suggested. They will be acted upon at a future meeting.
I have my notes, so feel free to ask questions. To get you started, here are some highlights:
– Patrick Moreland did most of the presenting. He said color coded bags makes it easy for haulers to see if the trash is ready to go. He said the colored bags also act as a form a peer pressure among neighbors.
– Moreland said selling individual bags meant someone on a tight budget who couldn’t afford the 5 or 10 packs could “buy just one bag to get through that week.”
– Waste Zero was the low bidder, whether for bags alone, bags with distribution services, or bags with distribution and education.
– Any retailer who wants in can sell bags through an agreement with Waste Zero.
– Ordinances will be updated to reflect changes in laws and policies.
– Steve Lisauskas, from Waste Zero, said his company uses domestic sourcing and manufacture, has warehouses in areas of different weather patterns and risks, and has a sophisticated tracking and accounting system. He said they could customize as needed.
– Moss Kahler said he was prepared to hold meetings and make a pamphlet, as well as work with Triple T on enforcement. He felt some illegal dumping could be expected.
– Moreland said enforcement is usually busiest as the program starts, then tapers of after six months or a year as people get used to it.
The board then took a break to discuss their Charter change response, which they decided would be reviewed before their next meeting then sent to local media and mailed to every household.
– Steve from Waste Zero said enforcement would be easy with a colored bag. Behavior changes without the need for fines, he told the board.
– David Gartenstein lamented that not many people came out for this presentation. “This is our publicity effort,” he said, adding that they would delay decisions so people would have time to let people come out and express views.
– Helping the poor afford this isn’t going to happen, said just about everyone. It undermines the program, other towns don’t do it, charitable organizations can fill in and help, etc.
– Kate O’Connor – “Did anyone of the groups you met with express concerns about the prices of bags?” Moss Kahler – “They all did. It will be really tough for low income residents, particularly families with babies in dispers.”
– Kahler said one town let diapers and styrofoam in clear bags be picked up for free.
– Kahler volunteered to come to anyone’s apartment to help them find space to store compost, recycling, and trash.
– Kate O’Connor said she preferred, after close comparison, the education plan offered by Waste Zero to that of Moss Kahler. “Waste Zero already has this stuff ready to go. Flyers, websites… I’m not for reinventing the wheel . They know what they are doing.”
– John Allen agreed, saying he didn’t think this transition would be that difficult.
– Gartenstein said he believed in someone local doing the education work.
– O’Connor suggested Waste Zero do the bulk of the mailing and promotion. “Maybe there is stuff for him to do,” such as local coordination, she said of Kahler, “Waste Zero can do much of this already.”
Informational meeting for Representative Town Meeting will be at Academy School on Monday, March 16, at 7 pm. Caucus at 6:30.
X-Ray Critters
“…He said color coded bags makes it easy for haulers to see if the trash is ready to go. He said the colored bags also act as a form a peer pressure among neighbors.”
If we don’t put our bags in tightly sealed plastic pails the animals, raccoons primarily but not exclusively, have a field day. How does this work? Will haulers be picking up mauled but correctly sorted trash scattered on the road? Is the hope to peer pressure animals as well as neighbors to respect the process?
PAYT trash bags should be placed in trash barrels at the curb
Residents are encouraged to put their PAYT trash bags in standard trash barrels. The driver will easily be able to observe the bags when opening and emptying the barrels.
Nobody wants trash scattered to the four winds!
Moss Kahler
Right. And nobody wants to be
Right. And nobody wants to be paying $3.00 for a trash bag, either.
Moving money around
One aspect of the implementation will be the Town buying containers to have parallel pickup in parks and around town. Free to use, as always. Businesses also supply trash bins in many places. I wonder if these locations will see an increase in people using their offerings?
I think the rollout will go relatively smoothly, as we do have most of the tools in places to keep things out of the trash now (unlike the last time around on this issue).
We could probably use the addition of one more, even smaller and cheaper bag.
Someone can make some money selling a handmade trash compactor. : )
The impact of this will be all the money diverted to paying for trash that used to buy cups of coffee, food, and various and sundry items about town. If this brings in $300k, it takes it from somewhere else. Our pockets are not infinite, and businesses can subsist on fumes for only so long. It’s another straw on the camel’s back in an economy that isn’t working for anyone except the very wealthy.
How could anyone with even
How could anyone with even minimal intelligence think that allowing people who cannot afford $3.00 for a single bag to buy them at a slightly lower cost is going to “undermine” the program? Shouldn’t the goal be to get everyone participating in the program? Kahler says it will be “rough” on low income people but clearly isn’t going to waste one second worrying about that.From reading this and previous reports this program is being initiated in the most punitive and least ” user friendly” way possible. And what about renters who have trash pickup included in their lease? Has anyone in this group given any thought at all to figuring out any of the details that will impact tenant/ landlord responsibilities or is their time spent salivating over how much money this will save the town and property owners. The only ones who WON’T be saving money are the poorest residents. And despite Kahlers’ s offer to come and help us all find room for composting bins in our apartments, many people live in very small or studio apartments with little or no extra space. In order to recycle in my current apartment I have to keep my recycling bins in my hall.
And, how are the elderly or disabled supposed to get to pick up these exorbitantly priced bags? Perhaps they can take taxis back and forth. Because they can afford it,right? Isn’t one of the roles of government to look out for their most vulnerable populations? What happened to that? Too little thought has been put into the ways this current roll out will negatively impact the elderly and low income and no time thought about solutions for those issues.No surprise there.
Undermining
The program is to make everyone pay for their trash, so not paying for one’s trash is undermining the program. It doesn’t matter if that is by choice or because of inability to pay.
To people with homes and good incomes, a couple of dollars isn’t much, so it is easy suggest to others that it isn’t that difficult to do. To people already behind on their budgets and having trouble making ends meets, this is another impossible item to add in. We might as well demand they take vacations in the islands. Not gonna happen.
Those who find this to be reasonable have to imagine a similar situation for them, in their personal budgets, where every dollar is already accounted for and spent, and no savings are available to tap into. Now, add a mandatory, say, $100 a month expense in. That’s what it feels like for those on limited and low incomes. A burden.
We have to do it, and it seems like the place to complain isn’t so much with the town but at the state level. We could certainly have a more creative local implementation to take the sting out of this (Moss’s examples of getting rid of styrofoam and diapers, for example, were not recommendations).
Pay what you want is often a way to earn more than if you set a single price. Experiments show again and again that some pay little or nothing, but others overpay, and in the end, profits are the same or higher than if a single price was set. We could have this “pay what you want” and probably do just fine.
We could have had a third, lower cost bag made available for people on fixed incomes. Or a fourth, for tenants. They could have been set at other price points. But, it is very unlikely that any of this will happen. What you saw/read about last night is what is being planned, at least for now.
Some tinkering seems to be expected.
Such as in Greenfield. Their town website says: “Due to fiscal constraints, the Town of Greenfield will be switching from PAYT bags to a sticker program. Homeowners can purchase the stickers at the same stores where they previously purchased their green bags. Prices are the same as they were for the green bags.”
and also
“The Town will continue to sell the $0.50 “mini” bags which are popular with the elderly and our “super recyclers”.”
Hmm… special bags for elderly will continue… : )
I'm fine with participating
I’m fine with participating in this program. I have no ax to grind with the concept of PAYT ( well, perhaps a teeny, tiny ax) But, the way this enormous change is being implemented in Brattleboro is punitive and not well thought out.
I saw that part of the “reasoning” for why there would be no sliding scale cost was that no other town is doing it. So what? Why are we determining our actions by what other towns are or care not doing? Why not be the first town to implement this project in a more compassionate way? Other towns don’t do many things that Brattleboro does do. For instance, most towns don’t have a Selectboard trying to build a 14 million dollar police station. But..Oh, wait..most towns don’t HAVE a Selectboard. There you go.
I think the Selectboard and the PAYT committee want this program to generate the most money possible and they are too lazy to look for ways to do that that don’t put additional nurses on the poorer residents of the town they were elected to represent.
Bring it up at Town Meeting
The budget isn’t carved in stone, it’s just a “proposed” budget. Unfortunately, you can’t make a motion to amend the budget like a citizen of one of the free towns, but you can speak at Town Meeting and urge representatives to make a motion to include a sliding scale fee.
You’d want to have an idea of the cost ahead of time so you can suggest an amount to add to the budget.
Consistency
The town acknowledges and attempts to redress income disparity in programs such as free and reduced school lunch, and offerings of affordable housing. It shouldn’t be such a reach to extend similar understanding to this process as well.
More q's
Are the bags made from recycled plastic?
Surely everybody is aware of the huge effort to eliminate plastic…
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-ocean-debris-plastic-garbage-patches-science/
Another question from the women of my household…What is the procedure for disposal of ‘feminine hygiene’ products. Please tell me part of the peer pressure campaign isn’t the broadcasting of neighborhood menstrual cycles.
To be clear we are very supportive of recycling..but this rollout seems short on both economic and practical considerations.
No one asked
It wasn’t mentioned at the meeting, but…
Waste Zero’s website says: “Our WasteZero custom imprinted plastic trash bags are made with recycled content, ensuring a constant focus on the environment.”
“WasteZero knows how to blend recycled content with other customer requirements (color, thickness) to deliver the best bag for the specifications.”
“WasteZero actually uses metallocene in our plastics”
“While we can manufacture bags with any percentage of recycled material (even 100%), we find that the strongest product comes from mixing both recycled and virgin material.”
“we make all of our bags in our leading-edge factory in South Carolina. ”
It looks like it depends on what we order. We could have 100% recycled bags.
…
It appears that they are solid enough and thick enough so that trash inside will not show through.
If Waste Zero was the 'low
If Waste Zero was the ‘low bidder’ on this project I’d like to know if the price that we are being quoted for the bags is the price Waste Zero is charging or is there an increase for residents to further increase the “tax benefit” for some of the town? It’s difficult to believe that $3.00 a bag is the wholesale price.
Cost per bag
The actual bag cost hovers around 20 cents per bag, depending on size, weight, printing, and if you want additional services such as distribution or education. The range was somewhere from about 13 cents to 25 cents, more or less.
The difference will go to cover costs related to getting rid of solid waste. If you look at the meeting documents you’ll see all the numbers. (On town site, under Selectboard, additional documents…)
What you are paying for...
The $3 per bag reflects the cost of actually throwing that bag of garbage “away”. The town has been paying nearly a million dollars a year for waste pick up and disposal. A portion of that (about a third of the total cost) will now be covered by us, the producers of our trash and not by the general operating fund of the town. The $3 will cover the following: the cost of the bag, the cost of the workers who drive around and pick up the bag, the cost of maintaining the trucks that are used to drive around and pick up the bag, the cost of driving the bag to a distant landfill and the cost of the tipping fee to leave the bag at the landfill – and administrative costs which are ubiquitous. Recycling and curbside compost is “free” in the sense that the cost of those services will still be carried by the town and not passed on to the public, except through taxes. I doubt if there is any “tax benefit” in any of this business.
I notice that both Dover and Wilmington charge their residents $2.50 to drop of a 30 gallon trash bag at their transfer stations. They have done this for a while. Recycling is free. Brattleboro is one of the very few Vermont communities that has provided trash pick up for “free” up to this point. We are actually ahead of many Vermont communities in that we have a curbside compost system up and running for everyone… something to be proud of.
Andy
Abuse of government power
***The board then took a break to discuss their Charter change response, which they decided would be reviewed before their next meeting then sent to local media and mailed to every household.***
At whose expense? Taxpayers’? Because if they’re going to use taxpayer dollars to print and mail their political response in opposition to a citizen-petitioned question on the RTM warning, it may be illegal. If it’s not, it ought to be. It’s certainly grossly unethical, unless they also intend to invite supporters of the question to push their agenda at taxpayers’ expense. And even then…
Maybe there needs to be another charter change?
Town Attny says it is legal
The board has a recent legal opinion in hand from the Town Attny that they can take positions and mail them out, on our dime. It’s one opinion, of course.
The money will come as an unforeseen expense, taken from the Town Manager’s budget.
Whether it is legal almost doesn’t matter. Perceptions matter. The perception is as you outline: selectboard spending our tax dollars to fight against a citizen-petition. Setting a precedent, too.
And, as has been pointed out, sending a “Wet Paint” sign to everyone in town might cause them all to want to touch the paint, just to see if it is really wet, thereby defeating the goal of thwarting the changes. It’s a reason to go vote in a year when low turnout could be expected.
The board may be about to learn first-hand about the Streisand Effect. : )
Bowtie
I have no doubt our town attorney says it’s legal – Fisher always has an interpretation of the law that favors his client. He is not the town ethicist, clearly.
But using the power of government and public money in a political campaign against a group that wishes to change the power government is unquestionably unethical and corrupt. Hopefully it will fail, and RTM will demand the selectboard pay the town back for their misuse and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
And if that doesn't work
And if that doesn’t work perhaps a class action suit will.
PAYT thread
Weren’t we discussing PAYT? Please start a new thread to discuss the legality of the select board expressing its opinion on changing the town charter.
Andy
The mailing was part of the meeting
“The board then took a break to discuss their Charter change response, which they decided would be reviewed before their next meeting then sent to local media and mailed to every household.”
A good place to start cutting the budget
Did they mention which budget line item will be used to fund their mailing? Does Bratt have a propaganda line item? Is there a selectboard slush fund?
TM
Coming from the Town Manager’s budget, so that office will absorb the cost.
I’m attachiong the proposed “fact sheet” to another story, so everyone can read what is being discussed.
RTM
So presumably the way to keep the selectboard from raiding the town manager’s budget for their political campaign spending is to cut it back to the bare bones at Town Meeting.