OTISFIELD — The Board of Selectmen will meet with an employee of Atlantic Recycling Equipment on Tuesday to discuss the cost of groundwork for a recycling compactor at the town transfer station.

The meeting is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at the Otisfield transfer station.

At their Nov. 1 meeting, selectmen voted unanimously to search for a new recycling service because of complaints from residents about Tice Waste Management, with whom they had signed a contract in June.

On Nov. 8, Chairman Hal Ferguson said selectmen signed contracts with ecomaine to handle recyclables and Almighty Waste in Auburn to transport containers. He said there would be a switch to single-sort recycling, and two containers at the Transfer Station on White Oak Hill Road would hold recyclables.

Administrative Assistant Anne Pastore said it has cost the town $250 each time ecomaine containers are emptied.

“Right now, it’s pretty much once a week that the container is emptied, but sometimes, during the busier weeks, it’s twice,” Pastore said. “That means it’s costing about $1,000 a month just to have recycling emptied, and it adds up if you do that for a full year.”

Pastore said a compactor would cost about $40,000, not including groundwork

However, Pastore said buying and installing a compactor would “pay for itself pretty fast.”

“Once you get a compactor (at the transfer station,) it takes 11 times the amount of product that our container currently takes,” Pastore said. “That’s a huge savings over time.”

Pastore said that during Tuesday’s meeting, Jim O’Regan from Atlantic Recycling Equipment LLC would look at the transfer station and “figure out what we need to add on” to get a compactor.

“After that, we’d get an estimate,” she said.

A majority of the compactor expense would come from money received from the recently dissolved Oxford County Regional Recycling Corp.

In July 2016, 12 of the 15 municipalities involved with the corporation voted to dissolve it and disburse the remaining equipment and funds to the towns that invested in it.

Ferguson said the town’s share amounts to about $24,000.

Pastore said if selectmen decide to purchase a compactor, a special town meeting would be scheduled to vote on spending the recycling disbursement and how to fund the rest of the cost.

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net

The Board of Selectmen will meet with Jim O’Regan of Atlantic Recycling Equipment on Tuesday to discuss the cost of groundwork for a recycling compactor at the town transfer station, according to Administrative Assistant Anne Pastore. (Sun Journal file photo)

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