Concord City Council Reinstitutes Pay-As-You-Throw Program

CONCORD, NH — The Concord City Council voted unanimously to reinstate the pay-as-you-throw program requiring the purchase of purple bags for trash collection beginning June 22.

The motion to reinstate the program was made at the end of a budget hearing Monday with Mayor Jim Bouley saying that Gov. Chris Sununu's decision to end the state's emergency stay-at-home order meant people could leave their homes to purchase the bags again.

The vote was unanimous.

Since April 20, Bouley said, the city had waived about $273,000 in bag fees. Trash costs, according to the city, have also increased about $10,000 a week due to people throwing out extra trash or not recycling as much, officials presumed.

A number of councilors spoke in favor of the reinstitution of the program citing that it was a user fee and kept property taxes lower — even though the program, nicknamed "the purple bag tax," often costs families more in fees than it would in property taxes.

Bouley also asked the Solid Waste Advisory Committee to look at all aspects of the program — including some of the public comments about the lack of quality of the bags.

Despite the perception by the council that the stay at home order has been lifted, that is not completely accurate.

The order by the governor only ended the stay-at-home order for healthy people under 65 — and even they are urged to stay home as much as possible. Residents over the age of 65 and those under 65 with underlying health conditions are still in a stay at home order as part of the Stay Safer At Home Advisory.

"New Hampshire citizens who are over the age of 65 and who have underlying health conditions that place them at high risk for COVID-19 are strongly advised to stay in their homes or places of residence as much as possible," Sununu's updated order, released Monday, said. "Such individuals are strongly advised to leave home only for essential needs and purposes."

The governor has also not lifted the COVID-19 emergency order he implemented March 13. That order stays in place in case there is a surge in cases and action has to be quickly taken. The governor has said in previous press conferences that he did not know when he would be rescinding the emergency order.

While there are many positive numbers concerning the virus including decreases in positive cases and hospitalizations, it is still a danger for vulnerable populations like the elderly. Only 15 of the 320 deaths in the state due to COVID-19 were people under 60 and just shy of half of the infections in the state are people 60 or older.

When the governor's order was shared with the mayor during the meeting, showing that the stay at home order actually had not completely ended, he mentioned the information to the other councilors.

"I'm just going to leave it as it stands 'cause there are lot of people I know, who are 65 and older, who are out and about," Bouley said. "I just wanted to make sure we clarified that and shared it."

Back in April, a number of councilors said they had heard from residents about their concerns with the costs and the difficulty elderly residents would have trouble obtaining the bags — something that technically has not changed.

A petition launched last week by Jenny Williams, urging the council to rescind the program entirely, garnered nearly 1,200 signatures in around 72 hours.

In an email to Patch, Williams thanked everyone who had signed the petition. She said, despite the decision by the council, she would continue collecting signatures until the petition hit the 2,000 mark.

"The city ward/ city council did not listen to the people of Concord," she said. "Maybe they did not know about the petition but the fact still remains — parts of New Hampshire are still closed. We are seeing a rise in the virus on two of the three states that are right up against our state — this means we are not out of the woods yet and income will still be affected for at least the rest of the year."

Williams said Concord residents were still struggling financially unable to afford them even before the virus. Many signatories also called the program "a failure" noting that the bags were weak.

"We are seeing not only houses fill with trash but there have been reports from those signing they are have seen people dump their trash into the woods and some streets (before the removal of the purple bags)," she said. "Others have even reported that they have seen the trash collectors throw trash and recycling into the same side of the truck. I and others have even had to double spend on trash bags with normal bags to line the purple bags so they do not fall apart."

Williams also challenged the concern about the increase in solid waste after the temporary suspension of the program saying she believed officials were seeing this because everyone was in "a mad rush" to clear out the backlog of trash that has been collecting on their porches and basements for the last 10 or so years thanks to these purple bags. Others, she said, were worried people would stop recycling. But she saw just as many people recycling now as before.

Williams suggested the city council needed to hold a public hearing and listen to constituents about their concerns.

Many people online, on both Patch's Facebook feed and the Concord NextDoor app, complained about the cost and the quality of the bags since the petition was published on June 12.

The cost to property taxpayers to cover the $1.6 million raised by the purple bags and containers in apartment buildings would be 0.36 cents per $1,000 valuation on property tax bills, according to the city — which is how solid waste was always paid for in Concord before 2009. On a home valued at $250,000, it would be about $90 a year. In other words, any household that uses more than a single $1.25 10 lb. bag per week and has an average valued home would save money by having solid waste completely in their property tax bill again.

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