Facts about paying for trash disposal

Trash disposal is a service that the town is not obligated to provide.

If the town provides the residents with trash disposal services, we will have to pay for it.

If we use money that should be placed into our vastly underfunded savings, it is not a trash fee vacation. It is a fiscally irresponsible mistake.

The trash fee has been incrementally lowered over the past years, which is the prudent way and a lasting way to reallocate the funding of trash disposal back into the general fund, if that is our intention. Either way we are still paying for it.

We have just been slapped with a dose of reality resulting from the same flawed thinking when we had our little vacation from increasing water rates.

Short sighted, feel good, temporary measures provide politicians with flashy campaign fodder for their postcards and Facebook pages. But what do WE gain from a one year trash fee vacation? $36.25 less to pay on four water bills. Then it comes back! What do we lose? Over a million dollars. Let’s learn from past mistakes and not repeat them.