WATERVILLE — City councilors on Tuesday will consider overriding Mayor Nick Isgro’s veto of a vote the council took June 6 to have the city take over curbside recycling pickup starting July 1 after its contract with Sullivan’s Waste Disposal expires.
The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at The Center at 93 Main St. downtown.
Five of seven councilors must vote to override Isgro’s veto in order for it to be quashed. Isgro vetoed the action June 7, the day after councilors voted 5-2 to reject bids from companies seeking to pick up recycling for more than $200,000 annually.
As part of that vote, councilors authorized the city’s Public Works Department to collect curbside recycling, hire an additional worker for nine months and buy a new packer truck that can pick up trash and recyclables at the same time.
The council voted to implement the plan at the recommendation of the city’s solid waste and recycling committee. Councilors Sydney Mayhew, R-Ward 4, and Nick Champagne, R-Ward 5, voted against the resolution.
Sullivan’s, of Thorndike, has collected the city’s recyclables for three years for $72,000 a year.
City Manager Michael Roy, who supports the solid waste committee’s recommendations, said Thursday that if the council does not override, the city is faced with what to do next. If approved, the recommended spending would have to be included in the city budget, the amount of which has not yet been decided, and the budget has not been approved.
“Come July 1, we no longer have a contractor to pick up recycling, so the council has to decide whether it wants to continue with recycling or not,” Roy said.
Isgro said in his veto message June 7 that the council did not simply review the committee’s recommendations but adopted them, and they require municipal appropriations of about $238,000 for the truck and a laborer.
“It seems inappropriate that required appropriations be approved by way of resolution rather than an Order of Appropriations, more suitably without upcoming discussion of the city budget,” Isgro’s message says.
He said he feels more time should be taken to consider various options.
The cost of a split packer truck, he said, would be $200,000, and hiring of an additional person would be $38,000.
The solid waste committee has been working on the trash and recycling issue and researching options for a long time, committee members said at the June 6 council meeting. The panel recommended unanimously that the city use its spare packer truck and hire an additional person for nine months to pick up recycling until the city could buy a truck that could take both trash and recyclables.
The city now picks up trash curbside and takes it to the Oakland Transfer Station, where it is then taken to Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. in Orrington, but the city’s contract with PERC expires March 31, 2018. After that, the city will take the trash to Waste Management in Norridgewock.
Sullivan’s now takes recyclables to ecomaine in Portland to be sorted. If councilors override the veto, the city would take recyclables to ecomaine until April, when they would be taken to Waste Management. From there they would be taken to ecomaine.
In other matters Tuesday, councilors will consider extending the city’s contract with WasteZero, which supplies retailers with purple bags residents buy for their trash and which they leave at the curb for city pickup.
“The contract extension is a formality,” Roy said. “We’ve been in a three-year contract and that contract ends June 30. They’ve lowered the price the city pays for them to do that service.”
The council agenda includes an item for councilors to consider a first vote on the proposed municipal and school budgets, but Roy said the council likely will wait to vote on the budget after the state decides what, if any, new money will come for schools. He said officials do not know when such information will be issued by the state.
The council Tuesday also will hear an annual report from Friends of Quarry Road and consider the sale of properties the city foreclosed on.
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17
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