CHINA — With the debate about commercial trash haulers serving town residents temporarily off the agenda, selectmen Monday began the broader task of updating the town’s solid waste management ordinance.

Whether they should even try to make the 1993 ordinance describe current practices was the first question.

Board members suggested that Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux look for another community’s ordinance that China might be able to adopt.

Meanwhile, the board got as far as revising the title of the local ordinance: It will become the Municipal Waste and Recycling Ordinance of the Town of China.

Selectman Neil Farrington, the town recycling coordinator, said commercial haulers who bring in residential trash are being charged only $20 a ton, instead of the $80 a ton that took effect July 1. The fee for commercial waste remains $80 a ton. Discussions of the fee increase at earlier meetings got a lot of input from the four trash haulers who collect garbage from Dumpsters in town. Farrington said no commercial waste is coming to the town’s transfer station.

Mickey Wing of Central Maine Disposal told selectmen he takes the commercial waste he collects in other area towns to Norridgewock.

On a related issue, Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux said the Town Office has had a return of better than 50 percent of the 318 transfer station surveys that were mailed to residents — an amazingly good result, he said.

Copies of the survey are available for all residents at the Town Office, transfer station, libraries and elsewhere in town. The deadline for accepting surveys is Aug. 8.

Board members began Monday’s meeting by hearing a request from resident Victor Montminy for a traffic study on the north end of Lakeview Drive.

Montminy said few drivers obey the 45 mph speed limit, and too many vehicles have noisy exhaust systems. He said the situation has escalated and is dangerous because of the increase in large trucks since the federal pilot progam that allows trucks weighing between 80,000 and 100,000 pounds on most of the state’s interstate system lapsed in December.

Selectmen voted unanimously to ask the state Department of Transportation to conduct a traffic study.

They noted that Maine’s two U.S. senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have introduced legislation to allow large trucks back on the interstate. Selectmen said that the experiment to increase truck weights on the interstate system did a good job of protecting local roads and drivers.

In other business Monday:

* Selectmen and resident Elizabeth Preston continued discussion of Preston’s proposal for a teen center, with the selectmen sending Preston back to talk again with Recreation Committee Chairman Rosalie Batteese.

* The board made two appointments: Alison Jorgensen as the new town health officer, and April Wood as a member of the Capital Investment Committee.

* L’Heureux announced that applications for the state circuit breaker property tax and rent relief program are available at the Town Office.

Mary Grow is a Kennebec Journal correspondent who lives in China.