Why trash idea?

Friday, March 18, 2011

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Wow, you’d think that Merrimack’s proposed Pay as You Throw program for trash disposal was going to lead to a huge tax increase, the way some people are responding to it.

It’s not, of course. Indeed, town councilors are convinced that it will save the town perhaps more than $600,000 a year and, perhaps more to the point, encourage people to recycle so that, tah dah, they don’t have to pay to throw away their bags of trash.

Really, we don’t see what all the fuss is about, but people sure got excited at the town Deliberative Session last week. Yikes.

Still, in a way, this is a little thing compared with the Deliberative Session decision to reject amendments to the town warrant that would have restored financing for fire and police positions. Fortunately, there are petition warrant articles that will be on the ballot, so there is still hope to save these positions, and they should be saved.

What puzzles us is the seeming dichotomy in these decisions, the one that sends to voters an advisory warrant article urging the council to abandon Pay as You Throw, the other rejecting money for the police and fire positions.

In the case of the first, money could be saved and the environment helped.

In the case of the second, what was the inherent message? That the town is safe enough, or will be even safer without these positions?

Let us assume that the council is correct in estimating that $600,000 could be saved via Pay as You Throw. How many police and fire positions would that fund? One of each would be enough and there’d be a considerable amount of money left over.

Perhaps the Deliberative Session voters – and praise unto them for taking the time to come out – don’t believe the council. But we can’t understand why they wouldn’t. Sure, the $600,000 in possible savings has got to be an estimate, but the council is sticking out its collective neck in using that figure and it’s unlikely they’d do it if they didn’t believe it.

Is this just an anti-recycling issue? Are people less concerned about paying to throw away trash than they are about having to recycle if they don’t want to pay? They just want to Throw as You Pay Nothing?

Something has to give here. Merrimack is looking for ways to raise revenue and those ways are finite. The primary one is, of course, to raise taxes. You want that? Didn’t think so.

Pay as You Throw is one way to bring in revenue, or at least save money, without raising taxes.

On this one, we support the Town Council and April 12, we hope the majority of voters will, too.