Taxpayers Win at Garbage Tax Meeting… For Now
The Council and Mayor clearly didn’t expect the packed room at the Town Council Special Meeting last night. The Mayor’s expression appeared to turn rapidly to one of of concern and agitation when a minute into the hearing a member of the crowd began to express his concerns.
I will work on getting the video up today. Unfortunately the crowd is not very audible, though no doubt the rounds of applause Councilman Thompson got for refusing to take this abysmal failure of a tax savings plan lightly will be audible.
Chairman Kehoe in an attempt to save himself the political punishment of letting an idea such as this even see the light of day couldn’t say enough that the meeting wasn’t for anything more than to talk about an idea. Interestingly I checked the public notices history and found that any time the Council has called a special meeting it has specifically been to act on an idea agreed upon behind closed doors.
The Council does not ever call special meetings to discuss ideas and plans it has no intention of acting upon.
Kehoe, at least own up and say you didn’t realize we’d stand up against you.
Councilman Don Pitkin also made a surprise visit for this meeting to defend the taxpayers and ensure any action the Democratic Majority attempted to take would have maximum opposition.
The proposal itself was an absolute joke. The salesman from WasteZero, the company which sells the bags and skims the profits, gave the hard sell with purely imaginary figures. The salesman told the Council that the Town would see 2.1 million dollars in new revenue from this program from a combination of reduced tipping fees and actually save taxpayers money. His assertions of course rely on total fiction. The fiction that the average East Hartford residence uses just 1.25 garbage bags per week. That’s right, WasteZero, the Mayor, Public Works Director Taylor… all of them went right along with this clear lie that we use 1 and a quarter garbage bags per week. It is clear where their motivation is. Even then the numbers don’t make sense.
Doing unscientific surveys I have found that most of the smaller households (1-2 people) are using 3 to 4 bags per week. In my own, a household of 4 we use 4-6 bags per week. No doubt you are somewhere in this 3-6 range as well. If the true average is about 4 bags per week East Hartford’s 16,400 trash pickup households will consume 65,600 bags per week at a cost of $82,000 per week or $4,264,000 per year. All to save 2.1 million on our taxes?
Councilman Horan in his classic “if you don’t like it tough” attitude gave a moving speech suggesting that East Hartford ought to be the leader in taxation and environmentalism for the hell of it. The highlight of his speech was were he suggested that we should tell him how to do the job he and his fellow democrats ran for election telling us they could do. He complained that although he received over a dozen emails nobody told him how to write the budget. That is your job Mr. Horan. Do it. His lack of leadership clearly showed when he suggested that we, the taxpayers, have a choice of a new garbage tax or a tax increase. Unacceptable.
The audience for their part were loudly approving to Horan’s surprise when he suggested reducing payroll in government. To which Mr. Horan asked who to cut. I for one gave a nice summary of excess positions on the BOE side just about a year ago. They still exist.
As a result of our active citizenship this egregious plan will not be in the budget tonight. ( I hope… you never know) But I highly doubt this is the last we have heard of it. This has been a long time pet, one which is ill tempered and has bitten before in other towns, of this administration and they are not going to willingly put it down.
In my opinion Councilmen Thompson and Pitkin were the best of the night. It is not every meeting that the Republicans have the best showing, but this night was a Republican night. Correction, this night was the people’s night.
Edit: Here are is the video.
Part 1
Part 2
Jon – nice summary of last night events. I was there and will add that I was a bit disappointed that residents were not allowed to ask questions. My thoughts:
No one brought up the issue of illegal dumping. Will this be a problem? How will clean-up and enforcement occur and at what cost to the taxpayers?
I agree – the 1.25 bags a week is ludicrous. We are a family of 4 – we probably use about 5, 13 gallon bags a week. If the “big yellow” bags hold 2 of these 13 gallon bags as stated then I’m not sure the 1.25 a week quote will cut it.
I thought the sales rep did a horrible job presenting. He seemed very scattered and was clearly there to sell. The comment when he stated that he would be the one to put the leaflets or notices on doors when people did not comply “if he had to” made him look like a liar and a fool.
I am truly dissappointed in Bill Horan. His comments were defensive and borderline rude. NO ONE and I mean NO ONE on the town council at this point in the evaluation process of this company should be completely for or against this new system. There are way too many gaps and unanswered questions and I think his stance that this “is a great idea” made him look foolish when so many unanswered questions and questioning of statistics came up during the meeting.
Is there a problem with implementing the new blue bins first and then seeing how this goes before implementing yet another program? Where is the thought process in this town? A smarter approach would be to announce to the town that “hey we are implementing this new blue recycle bin in hopes that we can increase recycling in town. In a few years we will begin evaluating these pay as you use programs.” What would have been wrong with that approach? I feel – and from the feelings at last nights meeting – that we, as residents have these things thrown in our faces with little to no notice and we are just suppose to accept it all. Think town council! THINK!!!
43% reduction? Yeah, right. According to the EPA, the average among these programs is about 25%. Still a good number, but about half of what WasteZero is promising.
Bottom line – EH MAY save money which will NOT be passed onto the taxpayers.
I am a member of the Green Committee where the blue bins were discussed. Interestingly the committee didn’t know that the barrels were going to be implemented in this year’s budget. What you said here was exactly the plan, except that Pay As You Throw was never an idea involved. We did discuss an incentive system whereby people are rewarded for recycling, but not a punitive system where people are taxed for a trash service they already pay for. This being based on the fact that every ton we recycle takes takes about $70 off the budget currently. (Wet newspapers anyone)
I figured out that my personal household trash impact is about $58.71 per year in tipping fees, yet it will cost me between $260-$390 in bag fees. Criminal.
Jon – thanks for the follow up. No surpise that the council likes to surprise us when they can….
Also, just doing a little investigating on the CT towns that already have programs like this in place. So far, I just looked up coventry….
Interesting to note that the 33 gallon bags in coventry are $1.00 versus the $2.00 they were proposing for EH.
Also interesting to note that coventry allows residents to place bulky items on specified days on the curb – so brush, furniture, mattresses, etc can still be picked up curbside…..apples and pears as thompson said….
I plan to look up the other towns mentioned to see how they compare…..hope you don’t mind if I post what I find on your site. Thanks
So I did a little more homework. No surprise that EH is once again trying to squeeze every last cent out of its residents. I can’t remember the 5th town mentioned last night, but in addition to Coventry that I mentioned above….
Sprague – a sleeve of 5, 32/33 gallon costs $6.25 – OR – $1.25 per bag
Stafford – .80 cents per large bag
Stonington – $1.25 per large bag
So why $2.00 for EH???????