BETHEL — Selectmen have begun discussion on the Tri-Town Transfer Station towns possibly charging businesses and condominiums for trash disposal.
But the idea drew strong opposition from businessman/condo manager Ron Savage.
Becky Seacrest, an environmental planner with the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, has been working with the Tri-Town board on ways to save money on trash disposal.
She told the Bethel board last week that she was “very surprised” to learn that Tri-Town taxes pay for pickup of commercial trash, noting it may be the only such organization in Maine and likely much of the country that does. Elsewhere, she said, paying for trash disposal is considered a cost of doing business.
“Right now (Tri-Town businesses) only pay for the rental of the can they put the trash in,” she said. “You pay the hauling and tipping fees, and that’s what all taxpayers are paying.”
Residential homeowners who have their trash picked up pay a flat fee, Town Manager Christine Landes said.
Seacrest also said the current arrangement doesn’t “encourage anybody to look at recycling.”
She suggested that as a transition step, towns might pay for business recycling disposal, but ask businesses to pay for trash disposal in order to provide incentive for recycling.
Seacrest said Pine Tree Waste told her its hopes to place scales on its trucks to get an idea of the amount of trash individual businesses are generating. Now, she said, “it all just gets lumped into one sum and gets spread out among the three towns,” with Bethel billing the other towns for their share.
Landes said Bethel, Newry and Hanover pay 55, 38 and 7 percent, respectively, of the Tri-Town Transfer Station budget. The budget is $439,000, with about $170,000 of that offset by revenues, she said.
But Savage, who attended the meeting, said businesses are already carrying a burden of trash disposal. He said he owns six business dumpsters in Bethel, and “every day I see people dumping trash into my dumpsters.”
He estimated that 20 to 25 percent of that trash comes from those residents, rather than his businesses. After Christmas, he said, the dumpsters are full of Christmas trees.
The topic of condos at Sunday River also came up.
Seacrest said she thought it would be a good idea for them to also pay for their trash disposal, and the transfer station pay for recycling.
Savage wondered if the condos were considered businesses or residences.
He said he manages condos for three associations at Sunday River, and they would be “glad to recycle.”
But he drew a line at paying for trash.
Savage said the condo owners pay taxes without having any say in how the money is spent. Asking them to also pay for trash disposal, he said, would be saying, “‘You pay for the schools, and now you have to pay for your trash.’
“It’s the only service we give them. It’s a slap in the face to the second homeowners in Newry,” he said, as well as in Bethel.
Seacrest said if there was little trash generated “it shouldn’t be that expensive for them.”
Replied Savage, “It would be the biggest mistake this town ever made to go after people’s trash, because I’ll have to put somebody with a shotgun in front of my dumpsters … It’s ridiculous.”
He also commented on the larger tax scenario among the towns, again noting the second homeowners create no financial burden on the school system.
“This town is not in bad shape,” he said. “We act like we’re a bunch of poor folk. Bethel and Newry have low taxes because of second homeowners. If you try to hit them between the eyes again — that’s just disrespectful to them.”
Savage also noted the recent addition of $5 million in new taxable property in Bethel, which helps offset taxes.
Selectman Peter Southam strongly favored promoting recycling.
“Encouraging people not to recycle is just wrong, period,” he said. “There’s no excuse for not recycling. There’s really no excuse for not composting. If you took that out of our waste stream, most businesses would produce very, very little trash. And that’s really the issue, more than anything else. It’s not an insult to people.
“Every single one of those second homeowners is paying for their trash at home, and they’re recycling at home. We’re the community that’s backward on this particular issue. Recycling is not optional, and it shouldn’t be. To say otherwise is just lazy and wasteful. You’ve got to recycle, you’ve got to compost, and what little trash is left, then you have to deal with it, and it won’t be very expensive, and I don’t think it’s going to bother most people.”
But, countered businessman Rick Whitney, “Businesses will have to lock their dumpsters.”
“That’s fine,” Southam said. “That’s pretty normal in most places. When I go to New Hampshire and other towns, there are locks on the dumpsters.”
Businessman Dwayne Bennett asked if he could get a dumpster for cardboard recycling, and was told he could. With that arrangement, he said he wouldn’t mind paying for trash disposal because most of what he generates is cardboard.
But Selectman Andy Whitney said charging for disposal would shift the cost burden from all taxpayers to strictly businesses.
After the discussion concluded, the board directed Landes to have Tri-Town continue to talk about how they would propose commercial disposal costs.
She said after the meeting that the Tri-Town board has informally discussed also having residential homeowners pay for hauling and tipping, but no specific ideas have been offered.
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