BRATTLEBORO-Come New Year's Day, the town will have a new trash contract.
Following a lengthy negotiation with Casella Waste Systems - the sole bidder for a new town trash disposal contract - Selectboard members have authorized Town Manager John Potter to pen and sign a $1.3 million, five-year contract with the company.
Assistant Town Manager Patrick Moreland explained that after about a half year in negotiations, the new contract will include curbside collection for downtown public trash and recycling cans and all municipal facilities starting Jan. 1, with "a planned transition to automated collection on or about Jan. 1 of 2026."
Town staff members who studied the options recommended two.
One scenario didn't include trash and did include a franchise option, where households would be responsible for disposal costs and Casella would be guaranteed a monopoly on providing services at a negotiated price.
The second scenario was "more similar to the program as it exists today," Potter said, with a one-on-one relationship between the town and vendor. Casella would pick up trash and recycling on alternating weeks and organics weekly.
Moreland defended the latter, $1.3 million option, saying it "actually represents a better value to the community of households that are eligible to participate in the curbside collection program."
This option, while more expensive than others, is, said Moreland, actually about 60% less than it would be if the town weren't included in the new plan and householders were forced to pay a separate vendor for trash collection.
"It does grow the size of the Grand List and does so in a year that's really inconvenient, but it's actually saving many of the households more money," Moreland said.
Board member Elizabeth McLoughlin said in voting for this, "we're adding to the budget but in the best interest of the householders."
Bag or no bag
Some discussion revolved around pay-as-you-throw system of buying trash bags and what removing bags in favor of 48-, 64-, or 96-gallon carts would do to the system and folks' assiduousness to recycle.
"The town will be doing pay-as-you-throw regardless of how we roll out the coming trash program," said Moreland, calling it "an easy way to describe the state requirement that we pay for the collection and disposal of garbage using variable-rate pricing depending on weight or volume."
"We're going to use pay-as-you-throw. The question really is how," he said, noting trash could be packed in bags or carts.
"My feeling is the carts are capacious enough that there's really not going to be any daily incentive for the trash disposer, i.e., me, […] because I'm not buying bags, I'm not seeing that come out of my pocket in real time," said board member Franz Reichsman, commenting on the bag question brought up by board member Richard Davis.
"I think we need to look at the question of whether we can do a better job of limning our trash volumes through this additional method or some other method [...]. We really need to have this discussion," he continued.
Moreland said once the implementation program is defined and a public education campaign delineated, it will be "important for people to recognize that throwing something in the garbage is a very costly way to dispose of that item."
Putting it into the organics collection, if possible, Moreland said, will save about $40 per ton.
Asked by Reichsman how the contract came to be for five years, Moreland said Casella, needing to acquire and amortize new machines, asked for that contract term.
Moreland said it is, in fact, "shorter than what we've had in previous years, so it seems reasonable."
Board Chair Daniel Quipp said the town's former contractor, Triple T, was "a great deal, and that is in the past."
He said new contract option pricing "was pretty rough" to swallow, but that given all considerations, having folks truck their own stuff to a transfer station is not viable for all residents.
"I had to make peace with the price of it, and I've only recently done so," Quipp said, noting the new plan is going to be paid for through property taxes, not by residents buying bags at the store plus a $60 dump sticker for one's vehicle.
"We had one company respond to our RFQ [Request for Quotation] and that was Casella, and we've been trying to do the best we can […] and they've been very good, they've worked with us," Potter said.
He said that the firm "seems to be a very community-oriented and good company."
"And I would hope that continues," said Potter.
This News item by Virginia Ray was written for The Commons.