If the proposed trash contract is withdrawn and a new proposal accepted, the City of Norwalk will face a $500k shortfall in the operating budget most recently approved. Which means that the Common Council will have to find $500k worth of operating expenses to cut, since raising fees or taxes isn’t a likely option. The $500k is the amount representing the likely increased cost of tipping fees under a new plan. The current plan, which includes using the Meadow Street faclity has tipping fees locke din at a November 2007 price. Any new proposal would be set at the current prevailing rate.
The Hour reports on the backup trash contract plan:
On Wednesday, Director of Public Works Harold F. Alvord said he will propose that the city go with a backup plan, which would rely solely on the Crescent Street transfer station.
“My plan is to propose the next best alternative, in which City Carting operates the Crescent Street transfer station only,” Alvord said. “We can’t do construction and demolition (there), so the solid waste that goes there now would continue to go to Crescent Street. And we can’t expand the recycling.”
Alvord’s comments come a day after more than a dozen residents blasted the proposal to hire City Carting & Recycling Inc. to operate the Crescent Street transfer station for resident drop-off and expanded recycling. Under the proposal, the city would lease the Meadow Street facility from City Carting and operate it as a commercial solid-waste transfer station.
Afterward, the Common Council tabled action, for the second time, on the proposed 10-year contract with City Carting and sent it to the council’s Public Works Committee for review.
Next Tuesday, the committee will discuss and perhaps vote on scheduling a public hearing — at a later date — on the proposed contract, according to William M. Krummel, committee chairman.
Krummel said he has inquired about holding the public hearing at Meadow Gardens, a public housing complex on Meadow Street, not far from the existing transfer station.
“The idea is to bring the subject right to the people most directly affected,” Krummel said. “It’s the traffic, that’s what’s concerning the neighborhood, as well as noise.”
Krummel said he support using the Meadow Street location “but with all the safeguards we can summon.” That means addressing existing traffic problems on the street, according to Krummel.
source: The Hour, Waste not wanted, by Robert Koch, June 26, 2008
