China’s off the hook – Town will maintain single-stream recycling

Council had a change of heart on recycling – Royal Examiner Photo/Roger Bianchini. Video by Mark Williams.

After hearing from a small, but united contingent of six public speakers urging them not to jump to a decision to abandon recycling because of a declining international market negatively impacting costs, the Front Royal Town Council did an about face.

That about face was a unanimous vote to continue to collect recycling in the coming year, albeit under different guidelines sent to a new Manassas collection point. The different circumstance will be “single-stream” or unseparated recycling collection.

Council and Vice-Mayor Bill Sealock, the latter chairing the meeting for absent Interim Mayor Tederick, instructed Town Manager Joe Waltz to prepare educational material for town citizens on the parameters of such collection. Those parameters appear to involve more stringent rinsing of food materials from cans and the “de-labeling” of certain types of containers.

Since the recycling vote did not follow a public hearing, but was the final of five agenda items listed simply as “Council Approval” matters, citizens addressed council during “Public Petitions and/or Correspondences” near the meeting’s outset. First speaker Adele Medved set the tone.

Adele Medved set the public tone in asking council not to rush toward abandonment of recycling.

“As a citizen who really cherishes the environment and everything we have to offer here I think we should do everything that we can to consider not suspending the recycling program. Eighty-five cents additional seems like a very small amount to pay for something like that,” Medved told council of the anticipated monthly hike to Town utility bills to cover the rising cost of recycling in a declining international market for the purchase of recycling materials.

Town poised to abandon recycling due to rising costs

The following five speakers – former Councilman John Connolly and wife Sheila, Liz Powell, James Shandley and Paul Gabbert – concurred. Even Gabbert, who was there to address other issues including: the Afton Inn – tear it down; the Crooked Run 2 development request for Town water-sewer extended to county land – don’t do it; and the EDA financial scandal – apologize to the public for the lack of past due diligence; prefaced those remarks by saying he agreed with Medved on the recycling issue.

Sheila Connolly asks council not to abandon recycling as her husband John, background, tends to family reinforcements

At a July 1 work session the annual cost to the Town to continue recycling at the best available option, shipping single-stream collection to Republic Services of Manassas, was estimated at $43,050 in the first year, equating to an estimated 85-cent hike to the solid waste collection portion of Town utility bills. However as staff noted, those costs could be covered in the new fiscal year by the elimination of the need to purchase a new recycling trailer at a price of $48,000 set aside in this year’s budget.

Despite the positive nature of that news for FY 2019-20, at that work session a week earlier Interim Mayor Matt Tederick said he heard a clear council consensus to stop recycling and decide whether to pick it back up were market conditions to become more favorable. In fact, the agenda packet picked up by this reporter earlier in the day had only one proposed motion listed on the recycling summary page – “that council suspend the Town’s Curbside Recycling Collection until the market demand returns.”

But when Vice-Mayor Sealock called for a motion on the matter near the meeting’s end, Letasha Thompson’s response was to “direct staff to continue recycling collection for the FY19-20 by changing the process” as noted above, at the estimated $43,000 cost paid to Republic Services of Manassas with the $48,000 allocated to the recycling trailer purchase reallocated to cover those costs.

See the public comments, council discussion of their collective change of heart, including Jacob Meza’s concern that too many town citizens will not accept an ongoing, future hike to their fees or taxes – even an 85-cent one – in support of any town service in the long term, in the following Royal Examiner video:

Historic treasure or dilapidated eyesore – other things than recycling were on at least one public speaker’s mind Monday night