NEWRY – Several hardy souls braved tough traveling Monday to attend a special town meeting and to approve appropriating $13,000 from surplus to cover an expected overdraft in the solid waste account.

Administrative Assistant Sylvia Gray said the extra funding was necessary because at the annual town meeting last March it was not possible to present an accurate estimate of solid waste costs for 2003. Newry runs on a calendar fiscal year and Bethel, which the town partners with at the transfer station on Route 2, operates on a fiscal year from July 1 to June 30.

As a result Gray said funding for solid waste disposal proposed for the town’s budget at town meeting each year only can be an estimate as Bethel’s town meeting and budget approval does not come until June.

She added that $115,000 was approved for solid waste disposal at the March town meeting but since Bethel included several projects to upgrade the transfer station, the amount needed to cover the town’s solid waste costs ran higher than expected.

“We needed to hold this meeting to ask for $13,000 to cover an overdraft in our solid waste account,” said Gray, “as we are faced with an increase from what we estimated last spring of 2.82 percent. We had expected our share at the transfer station to run 37 percent of the cost of operating the station for 2003, but we have learned that our share will be 39.82 percent.”

The town had a cushion in its solid waste account of $2,000, but selectmen said that amount would not be enough to cover costs for the rest of the year.

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