Disposing of trash is becoming ever more difficult, ever more costly, and of ever greater concern to municipal officials.

And Monday night the Bangor City Council received the latest bad news — the state refuses to give the problem adequate attention, the landfills fill quicker than options are presented, and the cost to the city of disposing of trash at the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. is going to triple.

During the regular meeting, the council passed an order “authorizing notice of solid waste tipping fee increase.” The city currently pays a tipping fee of $10 to dump trash at the PERC incinerator in Orrington. For residential customers the fee is included in property taxes. The tipping fee for commercial customers is included in contracts with their haulers.

The order authorizes the city manager to advise local commercial haulers of a possible $19 increase in the tipping fee, which could be in effect by April 1, 1990, subject to the approval of an amendment to the PERC contract by the City Council.

Before the meeting councilors met for a workshop to discuss PERC, and other trash problems.

“Things came to a head at the March 12 negotiating session” between PERC and its customer communities, City Engineer John Frawley said. “They started off the meeting by saying they would not put any more money into the project unless they had an agreement.”

The PERC officials said that they wanted an interim $19 increase retroactive to March 1, a long-term contract be in place by June 30, a 20-day termination notice, and a guarantee that the plant would receive 90 percent of its customers waste.

“We came close to terminating it all right there,” Frawley said. “People had their coats on before we got them to sit back down.”

The financial woes are compounded by a lack of suitable, state-approved space to dump front-end bypass, trash that cannot be ground and burned in the incinerator and needs to be taken to a landfill.

Available alternatives are severly limited. A few local landfills would fill the bill, but either the state has hesitated in granting approval or the populace has opposed the plan.

“We’re really right up against it,” Frawley said.

Additionally he said that the state — the Department of Environmental Protection and the recently created Maine Waste Management Agency — has given a less than wholehearted effort to help local communities find solutions.

“Why are we wasting the taxpayers money funding this thing if they’re not using the powers they were given,” Councilor Patricia Blanchette said.

The problem is not entirely black and white, said the city manager. “What we’ve got to remember is a whole lot has changed since the recent past,” Edward A. Barrett said. “There’s been two major revisions of the state solid waste laws, and there’s been a surge of NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard).”

In other business, the council granted a second continuance to the Fransway Realty, the owner of the land and buildings on Union Street between Third and Fourth streets that house Shop `n Save and Wellby Super Drug.

Fransway plans to increase the number of parking spaces and create a lot for employees. The Planning Board denied the request for a special exception. An attorney for the applicant told the council that they were undertaking a parking-traffic survey that would be ready for the next meeting.

The council agreed to the request. Councilors also said that if, after reviewing the results of the survey, they felt it was warranted, they would send the plan with the new information back to the Planning Board.