Solid waste budget sapping Newport

NEWPORT – To stem a hemorrhaging solid waste budget, Newport selectmen voted Wednesday night to call a special town meeting to authorize appropriating an additional $54,000 to fund the account for the rest of the year. As of Wednesday night, $104,000 had already been spent and the account was already more than $27,000 in the red.

An extraordinary amount of sick leave and tons of additional business garbage are being blamed for the unexpected overdraft, according to Town Manager James Ricker.

“Aside from when we lost our dam in the 1987 flood, this is the most seriously overdrawn budget in the history of this town,” Ricker said.

If the voters defeat appropriating the additional money, Ricker said, a real possibility exists that the transfer station could be closed for the remainder of the year. Residents and businesses would have to either bring their rubbish to Consolidated Waste Services in Norridgewock or hire someone to do it for them.

The manager explained that state law requires that a town provide a place for residents to bring their rubbish, not the service itself, and that the location does not have to be the local transfer station.

Ricker said a key factor in the overdraft is that there have been 1,142 hours of paid sick leave so far this year at the transfer station.

“That is more than in the last five years put together,” he said. “It is an unfortunate and unusual situation.” In past years, the average sick leave was 70 hours a year for the three-person crew.

But the biggest impact, he said, has been a dramatic and expensive increase in commercial waste tonnage. To prove his point, Ricker said the Mid-Maine Solid Waste facility serves 11 towns in the Dexter area. The total cost per resident amounts to about $74 a year. Newport’s waste costs residents about $113 a year.

The difference, he explained, is commercial garbage. From May to August this year, overall tonnage increased by 26 percent while the average increase in towns surrounding Newport was 2 to 3 percent.

But selectmen agreed that they walk a fine line – they want to be pro-business but not by placing a greater tax burden on their residents.

“Are we providing services to households or specialized services for businesses?” Ricker asked. Although businesses produce far more trash than households, they also pay property taxes and demand fewer services, such as educational costs and little, if any, town administration costs.

The selectmen and Ricker rejected a second option, which would have trimmed the transfer station hours to part time and prohibited all commercial trash from coming in. They all agreed, however, that a solid waste study committee needs to be established to review the management, operation and funding of the transfer station.

Ricker said the meeting will be called for late October and will also include a developer’s request to accept a new road and a Community Development Block Grant application on behalf of the Newport Water District.