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

Town Council Calls Special Meeting on Garbage Tax

The East Hartford Public Notices system sent me an email a little bit ago informing me that a special meeting has been called relative to the Pay As You Throw garbage tax that the Mayor and Public Works director Billy Taylor presented to the Council this past Monday.

The meeting will be on Monday, March 8th at 7PM,  directly against an important meeting of the Republican Town Committee at which the Republican Town Committee members will elect officers for the 2010/2011 term.  This will force the Republican Town Council members and other Republican Town Committee members such as myself to either not participate in an important RTC meeting or skip the special meeting and perhaps be excluded from an opportunity to prevent this new garbage tax from being implemented.

Perhaps the Council will reschedule. Hopefully.

Something stinks in East Hartford. Mayor/Public Works propose a new tax to pay for garbage.

Mayor Currey and Public Works Director Billy Taylor took the lid off a plan they’ve been discussing behind closed doors for a while at Monday evening’s Public Works budget presentation before the Town Council.

The pair are pushing a plan which will require every household in East Hartford to purchase special garbage bags in order to dispose of their trash.  According to the Hartford Courant the estimated cost per bag is $2 for 33 gallon bags, $1.25 for typical 14 gallon kitchen size bags and $0.63 for an 8 gallon bag.

In a sinister fashion this plan is being pushed as an alternative which can trim 2% off the 9.2% proposed tax increase if the Town Council adopts it this year. Based on the Mayor’s calculations in her budget message a decrease in the tax increase of 2% would yield a  $78 savings, yet the cost to a taxpayer who disposes of 4 kitchen bags of trash per week will be $260.  Clearly this is an ill thought idea or one whose motives are not truly rooted in any sort of fiscal prudence.

We get a clearer look at what the true story might be with the following from the Mayor.

“I believe this is where the rest of the country is going to be in the next 10 to 15 years,” Mayor Melody Currey said. It would enable the town not only to save money, she said, but to be an environmental leader. If all goes according to plan, and residents cut back as much as WasteZero says they will, the town’s 17,489 tons of trash output could be reduced to less than 10,000 tons.

“I know we are a poor community, but that doesn’t mean we have less of a responsibility,” Currey said.

Let’s be clear. The Town will not save a single dollar, the taxpayers will pay substantially more taxes while satisfying the personal moral objectives of certain elected leaders, the wallets of the taxpayers be damned.

Every dollar in reduced tipping this plan could save can already be saved through efficient single stream recycling. No new tax is needed, no new tax is wanted. Just as we saw a significant increase in illegal bulky waste dumping, such as at Gorman Park, when the Town decided to charge a permit fee for disposal we will almost certainly have examples like the above photo around town if this plan is implemented when those of us already struggling can’t afford to dispose of our garbage legally.