Monday, February 16, 2009

Interesting post, worthy of follow up ...

For those of you who don't know, the Concord Monitor has a comment feature on stories and letters so readers of the online version can make statements. You can do this anonymously or register your name.
This one comment popped out at me over the weekend [emphasis mine]:
I would also like to add from the City council Meeting held on 02/02/2009 comments added from Jan McClure. During the discussion period there was a talk about bi-weekly pick up or weekly pick up of recycling. Ms McClure states that she would like to consider staying with the bi-weekly pickup and the added revenue savings put back into the city general fund for funding other programs. The pay as you throw program was suppose to be applied toward the reduction of cost of waste disposal. Your council members are now considering funding other programs with the revenue before the program has started. We were told by the city that these revenues would go directly toward the waste issues in Concord, not to fund more broken programs. Clearly the city of Concord residents have been told false information. When it is election time remember the three candidates who were against the pay as you throw, Councilman Lemieux, Councilman Patton and Councilman Stetson and commend them with your votes.
If the City takes revenue from the pay as you throw program and adds this to fund other programs this program become a new Concord City tax. This tax is not tax deductible yearly like property taxes and is hidden revenue for our city. I am outraged with our City that they would consider funding other programs with this hidden tax.
If this is legit, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, many of us have been snookered into thinking that PAYT was about expanded recycling. We didn't mishear - the bag tax is supposed to fund the increase in the incinerator trash fee AND expansion of recycling to weekly pickup. Clearly, some of these councilors cannot be trusted on any level to do the right thing and stand by what they say.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I heard McClure's comments and her related proposed amendment to do PAYT but keep recycling to once a week to save money for the general fund. This would have been the worse of both worlds in my opinion. I believe the council rejected McClure's idea.