Trash Fee Truth

Two weeks ago, I submitted a post to the Patch which listed facts about trash disposal. It can be found here:
https://patch.com/massachusett...

Since then, much fact spinning has taken place. Most recently, a letter to the editor from former Selectman Boussy starts off with a completely false description of Town Meeting Article 22. We are not being asked to vote on whether there should be a trash fee or not. It's under the authority of the Board of Selectmen to do that, not Town Meeting. We are not choosing whether our trash fee should be placed into reserves. That would be illegal. The trash fee pays for trash disposal costs. The article asks us to TAKE money that should be destined for our underfunded reserves and apply it instead toward trash disposal costs, resulting in a temporary break for us. Imagine that you want to take a temporary break from paying for cable tv, but you still want the service. You just don't like to pay for it. So, you decide to put less money into your 401k and use that money instead to pay for your cable tv for a year. It's the same thing.

Selectman Boussy's letter goes into a long history of trash fees and trash disposal proposals and decisions. What is left out, though, is the fact that when Mr. Boussy and Selectwoman Colarusso comprised 2/3 of the majority vote on the Board, your trash fee was not abolished. Instead, when there was an actual surplus one year in the trash fee account, more money collected from us than was needed to pay for the trash disposal costs, a discussion took place on how they wanted to spend the surplus. They wanted to spend it on barrels. Only former selectman John DePinto wanted the surplus returned to the residents. Our current trash fees do not generate a surplus.

If you plan on attending Town Meeting tomorrow night, please read Article 22 carefully, and vote no.