YOUR HELP IS NEEDED

The Board of Supervisors reduced the days that the county transfer stations are open from 4 to 3 effective Aug. 1, 2009. Now they are considering cutting another day a week from their hours. This would make for a 50% reduction in operating hours since August. At least four full-time staff would lose their jobs. (The County also has eliminated the transfer station overseer position as of 1/1/10.)

Without the transfer stations, garbage will end up being thrown into ditches and over banks.

And you will have no choice (if you don't want to illegally litter or burn your trash) but to hire a private waste hauler who likely does not recycle, at about $30 a month -- $360 a year! Any savings in property taxes will be more than made up for with this new expense to residents.

Read our full proposal for waste management in Washington County.

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WHAT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS CAN DO

1. Contact your town supervisor by phone or letter IMMEDIATELY. If you have a fax machine, you can fax it to the Board of Supervisors office 746-2219 (phone 746-2210). (Only email your supervisor if you are certain he or she checks email daily. Many supervisors rarely check.) Download a sample letter.
2. Write a letter to the editor now and send it to the Post Star and all your local papers.
3. Commit to attending at least one upcoming County meeting (which unfortunately take place during working hours), if possible. Phone calls and letters are definitely not enough. We need people to speak and people to witness. Email back if you are able to attend a meeting, and we will update you. Our presence will change the outcome. It did in February when mobilizing people to attend meetings stopped cuts. And it did again when we showed up and the Public Works Committee voted against any more cuts so soon.

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BACKGROUND AND MORE REASONS TO STOP THE CUTS.

The rationale for making these cuts is to save the taxpayers money. Letʼs look at some arguments that refute that cutting back on transfer station hours and staff would save us money.

• Even if the transfer stations were completely closed, the County solid waste budget would still include a huge subsidy (shortfall payment) to the Hudson Falls incinerator - $2.1 million or more in 2009, $2.3 million or more in 2010. It also includes $235,000 in debt payment for the transfer stations. This does not include unemployment expenses. Cost savings?
• The County collects over $1 million in trash sticker fees plus hundreds of thousands of dollars from selling recyclables. The value of recyclables has declined with commodity markets, which are likely to go up in the future. All of this income would be lost. Cost savings?
• Only about 2% of each of our County property tax bills goes to operating the transfer stations ($780,000 a year from the County's general fund). If the stations were to close, most of us would pay way more than that to hire a private hauler – about $30 a month, or $360 a year. No cost savings here.
• Cutting more hours means the closing of our transfer stations is imminent. The more inconvenient transfer stations hours become, the less people will use them. Cutting back hours as severely as suggested would put the stations at the point of diminishing returns. If not enough people use them anymore, the county will have a perfect excuse to close them completely.
• Meanwhile in Rutland County, Vermont, more people than ever are using Rutland's transfer station. Why aren't we learning from them?
• If the transfer stations close, and private haulers are our only legal option, they will certainly raise their prices. There is no cost savings to the taxpayers here.
• The shortfall in the solid waste budget is reflected almost exactly in the subsidies we pay the trash incinerator for their budget shortfall every year. Supervisors need to be thinking about how to address this issue so as to maximize recycling and other alternatives to disposal when the incinerator contract expires in late 2011. Do we really want to let go of our transfer stations before this happens?

Only a few of the supervisors appear to believe in the transfer stations on principle alone. They all want to give the appearance of doing things to save taxpayer dollars and they see the transfer stations as easy targets. It's up to us to persuade the supervisors that there will be serious repercussions if they go ahead with these cuts.

For more background information, including the supervisors addressed and newspaper addresses click here