NORWICH – The Chenango County Public Works Committee recently tackled preliminary 2007 budget figures that include $500,000 in equipment purchases and require a $57,000 increase from taxpayers for recycling operations.
Equipment purchases have been down since 2004 when all of the county’s department heads were directed to cut costs by 50 percent. Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon said he anticipated being able to afford the new machinery due to anticipated revenue from emergency disaster agencies that responded following the area’s 2005 and 2006 floods.
Gibbon agreed that overall money will indeed be tight, however, in 2008 when the federal and state relief streams stop and the county begins constructing Cell 3 at the Pharsalia Solid Waste Landfill.
“The way my budgets work, my revenues have to balance my account. ... It hurts us, the timing of receiving funds. The disasters meant we couldn’t get done what we had planned to do, and we’ll be using this money. ... The real effect of what’s going on will be apparent in 2008. We’ll either have to cut back by 50 percent again or get more from the general fund.”
As he normally does at budget time each year, and generally with the support of fellow Democrat committee members, Supervisor Peter C. Flanagan, D-Pharsalia, questioned taxpayer-supported recycling and landfill tipping fee rates.
“It looks like we are now on a very tight budget at the landfill,” he said.
The purchase of a new truck, containers and bins as well as sharply higher fuel costs are blamed for the projected levy increase for recycling operations. Even though recyclables are up 15 tons from this time last year, Gibbon said prices for selling them remain low.
Flanagan said he viewed recycling as a cost of running the landfill and hoped it would eventually be folded into the landfill budget. “My goal is to have this a user-funded facility. People who use it are the ones who pay for it. The taxpayer is now paying for recycling on their property taxes.”
While Gibbon agreed with Flanagan that recycling extends the life of the county’s landfill because it decreases the volume that goes in, he said the two budgets were separate because their funding streams couldn’t be mixed. He also confirmed that a new truck paid for within the recycling budget would only be used for recycling purposes.
“They aren’t separate budgets to me,” Flanagan said, referring to landfill and recycling. “I don’t like to raise taxes for a reason and then have it roll off into the general fund and go God knows where. ... My objection is that we are increasing the local share.”
Gibbon reiterated that the funding streams couldn’t be mixed and said Chenango County’s recycling operations are “the most cost-effective recycling operations found in the surrounding counties.”
Back in 2004, Supervisor James J. McNeil, D-City of Norwich, spearheaded a motion that would raise tipping fees at the landfill in order to offset recycling costs as well as help pay for the eventual construction of Cell 3.
The county has set aside $500,000 of the estimated $2.3 million that will be needed to close Cell 2 and build Cell 3. (Cell 2 is expected to be full in 2010.) McNeil estimated that raised tipping fees would contribute $40,000 in revenue per year. Flanagan, McNeil and Supervisor Homer D. Smith voted to raise the fees two years ago, but were defeated in committee. Opponents argued that higher fees would mean less customers.
“We are never going to see an increase of tipping fees coming out of this committee,” McNeil said last week.
“If you raise them a lot later when you are forced to, then people are really going to squeal,” Flanagan added. “Raise it a couple of dollars now. Let’s try it and see if we do loose customers.” In addition, the Preston supervisor pointed out that 2006’s budget allotment of $75,000 for Cell 2 closure costs “falls far short of the $200,000 to $300,000 the DPW budgets used to have left over.”
“We tried to inch up tipping fees, but met with disapproval. ... We are going to have to spend about $3 million to build Cell 3. ... Are we going to have to go out and borrow money?” he asked Gibbon.
“Of course you will,” Gibbon replied. After some discussion of the county’s ability to make debt payments while paying off other obligations, Gibbon said the county would be able to do it starting in 2008.
The county’s landfill was built in 1994. The construction of Cell 2, later in 2002, cost taxpayers $2 million. It was paid for through a direct levy and raising tipping fees.
First-year committee member Rick E. Chase, D-Bainbridge, asked what increases would be necessary to make a difference. “I pay $3.25 a 30-gallon bag to take my garbage to the landfill near me,” he said.
Town of Smyrna Supervisor James B. Bays, also a first-year committee member and Democrat, asked Gibbon to conduct a survey of tipping fees in neighboring counties and present a report to the committee in September.
McNeil had suggested increasing tipping fees from $55 to $57 a ton and by from $1.25 to $1.35 a bag. Voting for the measure in 2004 were supervisors Peter C. Flanagan, D-Preston, James J. McNeil, D-Norwich, and Homer D. Smith, D-McDonough. Tipping fees haven’t been raised for 12 years.
In other public works news, haulers delivered 3,950 tons of asbestos and 1,400 flood-related debris in July, up by 5,750 tons for the year. The department made $160,000 in addition revenue from asbestos from excavation work completed at the New York State Veteran’s Home in Oxford. Gibbon said flood debris in Afton and Bainbridge was still being collected. “We still have about a dozen loads to pull out of Bainbridge,” he said.
Bainbridge’s Chase said he has encouraged people in the village and town to take debris to the county’s landfill while tipping fees are waived instead of leaving it piled up in front of their homes.