Parsippany Recycling Center Closes Weekends; Residents Incensed

PARSIPPANY, NJ — The Township of Parsippany received a storm of angry comments when it announced Friday on Facebook that its recycling center would be closed on the weekends until November due to budgetary constraints.

The decision leaves many residents without access to the Recycling Center at a time when it is most convenient. The post received 138 comments, many of them angry.

“I have no words. Apology not accepted,” one user wrote.

“Close during the week! Weekends are all some folks have,” wrote another user. “Now the streets are going to [be] lined with oversized crap.”

“Maybe we should close the Mayor’s office Mon-Sun to save a few bucks as a town as well?” wrote another.

The closure indeed results from a lack of funds, according to Parsippany spokesperson Peter Koerella, who told Patch the decision was reached Friday when the Department of Public Works received its operating budget. Earlier in the year, a budget approved 4-1 by the Township Council cut $2.5 million from the municipal budget. According to Koerella, Director of Public Works Jim Walsh recommended to Business Administrator Fred Carr that the Township close the recycling center due to “budget constraints, workforce salary commitments and anticipated overtime expenses for keeping the center open on Saturdays.”

Staffing the center during the weekend would mean pulling employees away from regular weekday operations, which could impact residential garbage pickup, recycling pickup, and yard waste pick up. Even with the cuts, residential recycling will continue its regular schedule, Koerella said.

The center may open on Saturdays in November, but Koerella said it is too early to make any determinations. A New Jersey state law allows unused municipal budget monies to be reappropriated to other departments in the final two months of the calendar year, with approval of the Township Council, Koerella said. It will also depend on whether funds from other departments become available.

Koerella noted that the Township’s sanitation crews have worked hard to provide all usual services, despite “the smallest workforce in recent memory.”

“Our Townshp’s sanitation crews, recycling crews, and yard waste crews have done an incredible job to keep pickups continuing consistently through some of the most challenging circumstances Parsippany-Troy Hills has ever faced,” he told Patch in an email. “Not just with the pandemic, not just with budget constraints, but the teams are currently working with the smallest workforce in recent memory, despite plenty of job vacancies available and urgently hiring for in the department currently, which have yet to be filled. We can’t thank our DPW crews [enough] for working tirelessly to keep operations going through this challenging time, and asking more of them would not be fair, or fiscally prudent.”

Still, Koerella said that resident complaints are “absolutely valid and completely understandable.”

“Closing the recycling center on Saturdays was not an easy decision, but a necessary one at this point,” he wrote. “We are looking at everything possible to try to re-open the center again on the weekends, and we will let everyone know if this situation changes. In the meantime, residential recycling pickup continues, and the recycling center continues to be open Monday through Friday from 7:30 AM to 1:45 PM.”