Danvers $200 Trash Fee Proposed To Offset Impending Budget Crunch

DANVERS, MA — The Danvers trash fee proposal that created much consternation during the spring budget season is back on the table to pay for the escalating cost of town services leading to a potential deficit and an increased school budget for in-house special education programs.

The Danvers Select Board Budget Conference Committee proposed a $200 fee annually per household during Thursday's joint meeting of the Select Board, Finance Board and School Committee amid what Town Administrator Steve Bartha called a "broad consensus among the BCC on the concept of the trash fee as the most viable short-term option to maintain service levels and ensure sustainability."

While members of the BCC generally spoke in favor of the trash fee, the response in the public comment portion of the meeting was once again decidedly split with some speakers supporting the willingness to pay for trash to increase the school budget, while others deemed it a tax and workaround Proposition 2 1/2.

Select Board Chair David Mills sent the meeting into recess for about 10 minutes near its three-hour mark because of an unruly back-and-forth during the public comment section of the meeting.

Bartha said the town is facing a $1.5 million budget deficit to fully fund town services amid escalating costs for special education, the contribution to Essex Tech, debt services, increased retirement contributions and general inflation.

"We're in a situation where expenses have caught up to our ability to provide services and we're at a bit of a crossroads heading into next year's budget," he said.

Most of the proposed school budget increase would go toward in-house special education services with hopes that increasing special education services within the district would keep more students in Danvers Public Schools rather than the town having to pay for them to travel out-of-district for school, which would eventually lower overall expenses.

Bartha said most of the budget increases across the rest of the municipal departments are non-discretionary.

"If we make cuts in our budget we are talking about people," Bartha said. "We don't have in our budget areas where we can eliminate. There is not any fluff, per se, that can be cut. It would be services."

Select Board member Matt Duggan said the town should take a long look at cutting services if current revenues do not allow for them. However, other members of the BCC argued that residents need to be willing to pay more for the services that are necessary.

Select Board member Gardner Trask noted that the annual 2.5 percent rise in the tax levy allowed in Proposition 2 1/2 is insufficient for a town like Danvers to maintain proper services in the long run and that residents who take pride in the town being one of a handful in the state to never approve a tax override are misguided.

"I don't think that's a point of pride," he said. "I think it's a point of shame at this point."

Bartha said the $200 fee is in line with what some neighboring communities, such as Beverly and Salem, and would cover about two-thirds of the cost of trash and recycling the town now pays out of the general services budget.

Under the proposal, residents would be able to opt out of paying for and receiving curbside trash removal, and there would be exemptions for seniors and those with demonstrated financial hardship.

This past spring, the town paid about $900,000 out of its free cash reserves for the approximately 7,900 households to receive new trash and recycling barrels necessitated by the new automated collection service contract.

The Finance Committee clashed with the Select Board at the time on its recommendation that the town should seek to recoup the payments through some type of fee and then put that money toward other essential town services.

A vote of town meeting eventually sided with the town using its already-collected tax revenue to pay for the barrels rather than require residents to pay for them separately.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)