City councilors are looking to Saco as a potential model for a new trash pick-up program as an alternative to charging residents for trash bags.
The city has been wrestling with how to pay for trash pickup and increase recycling since Mayor Bruce Chuluda proposed a pay-per-bag trash program and curbside recycling program nearly two years ago. The council rejected that program, and has been looking at other options.
The City Council’s Committee of the Whole heard a report on a system currently being used in Saco at a meeting Monday night.
The committee took no action at the meeting, but members indicated they would be interested in learning more about the automatic trash collection system used in Saco.
City Administrator Jerre Bryant said in Saco, trash is picked up using an automated system that requires only one worker to operate. Saco provides a 95-gallon trash container to each residence in the city, and the containers are dumped into a trash truck by a mechanical arm, which is controlled by the driver.
In addition, Saco also provides two smaller recycling containers for each residence, one for cans, milk jugs and glass jars and the other for newspapers, magazines and other similar items. The recycling system is semi-automated, requiring two employees to place the recycling barrels onto the truck’s mechanical arm before it is dumped into the truck.
Saco purchased all its trash and recycling barrels at a cost of approximately $33 per 65-gallon barrel and $35 per 95-gallon barrel. The city supplies one set of barrels at no charge to each residence and the barrels stay with the address that it is assigned to. The barrels purchased by Saco come with a 10-year warranty and the city does small repairs to barrels when it is necessary.
Bryant said Saco has seen an increase in the city’s recycling rate since going to the automated system in January of 2003. He said the system would cost Saco an estimated $940,000 this year. Because Westbrook has about 20 percent more households than Saco, Bryant said implementing a similar system here would cost about $1.2 million, about $300,000 higher than the current system.
Implementing a pay-per-bag trash pickup program would be cheaper, Bryant said, because it would remove the burden of trash collection from property taxes and charge a fee to residents for each bag of trash they throw away. The other advantage of a pay-per-bag system is that it gives residents an incentive to increase the amount of material they recycle.
City Council President Jim Violette said he wasn’t in favor of pay-per-bag because he felt it would unnecessarily place additional costs on residents. He said in tight budget times it would be very easy for the city to find extra money by simply increasing the cost of the bags instead of increasing the property tax rate.
Violette said he favored the Saco system because he felt it would increase Westbrook’s recycling rate by providing curbside recycling without making residents pay for each bag of trash they throw away.
Mike Miles of Methodist Road said it was vital for the city to look at ways to boost its recycling rate, including going to pay-per-bag if that’s what it took. “There’s just no good reason not to be recycling,” he said. “We know that unless you have some incentive like pay-per-bag, most people don’t change their behavior.”
In other news, at a special meeting of the City Council held prior to the committee meeting, the council voted unanimously to authorize the police department to purchase a new police dog. The $4,500 cost of the dog would come partially from the police budget and also from money that was seized by the police in connection with drug arrests.
Typically, the police department uses dogs that are donated to them. In this case, the department was looking to purchase a dog because a dog that was recently donated to the department proved not to be suitable for police work.
Police Chief Paul McCarthy said the police wanted to act quickly to get a new dog so the dog and its handler Officer Phil Hebert could take part in the Maine State Police 16-week training class, which is already underway. He said because Hebert has extensive experience working with police dogs, the state police will allow him to join the class in progress, provided he has a new dog within a couple of weeks. If the police had to wait for a donated dog, the department would have to wait for almost a year before a new program is offered, McCarthy said.
The department will purchase the dog from Canine Services of Connecticut, said McCarthy. Besides being the low bidder, McCarthy said the kennel also guarantees the dog will be suitable for police work. He said if the dog fails the training class, it would be replaced with a new dog at no cost to the department.
Councilor Ann Peoples said she appreciated the benefit that police dogs bring to the city. “I think they’re a wonderful addition to the department,” she said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
