Smith Floats $$-Raising Recycling Idea

As he kicked off his reelection bid under a sunny sky at the tree-shaded Upper State Street Farmers Market, East Rock Alderman Matt Smith talked green: He said he’s looking to increase commercial recycling in his ward and in the process to keep helping the city plant more trees and advance its sustainability goals.

Smith said that currently not a single commercial apartment building or business uses the city as its recycling vendor, although a law on the books would permit that.

He said he chose the issue because it’s close to his heart, important for the city, and ​“it can get lost in an era of cuts.”

At Monday night’s Board of Aldermen meeting Smith said he plans to submit legislation for a pilot program he has worked out with the Department of Public Works and the Office of Sustainability to change the current law to make it more flexible and competitive and to generate revenue to the city coffers.

Smith’s remarks elicited warm applause from a crowd of over 100 including city officials such as Economic Development Department chief Kelly Murphy (also Smith’s constituent) and his fellow aldermen Greg Dildine of Westivlle, Downtown’s Bitsie Clark, and Fair Haven Heights’s Maureen O’Sullivan-Best. His candidacy also elicited the attention of Ward 9 Democratic Co-Chair Paul Wessel’s English bulldog Rusty.

Some time in July the ward committee will have to meet to endorse either Smith or his announced opponent Jessica Holmes. The two candidates are engaged in a rematch of last November’s special election to represent Ward 9, one of the city’s most politically engaged. They’ll face each other in the Sept. 13 Democratic Party primary.

Should the commercial recycling program succeed, Smith said, the first $10,000 of income generated should go to help restore the tree-planting capacity of the city, specifically some of the $17,500 that was cut from the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) tree-planting grant.

While aldermen were able to restore funding to the branch libraries and to the New Haven land Trust in the recent budget approval process, URI was left out. Smith called that a serious omission ​“especially when we look at all the efforts URI has done to increase green space here.”

Community activists such as David Streever (Smith’s campaign treasurer), Doug Hausladen (a candidate for an open downtown aldermanic seat), and Rebecca Turcio were also present, as were past Aldermen Bob Frew and Gerry Garcia.

Reached by telephone, Holmes responded to Smith’s proposal: ​“As an idea generally that sounds great. We need to be looking into our possible venues for efficiencies, pain-free ways to generate revenue. In cases like this we need to make sure we follow into implementation. This requires commitment to details.”

“I chose Upper State Street [to make the announcement] because we’ll be working with businesses in this corridor to work out the kinks,” Smith said Saturday.

In developing a commercial recycling initiative and putting it front and center in his campaign, Smith said he is building on green achievements of the last six months of his tenure including: helping to win a citywide residential recycling competition and co-sponsoring legislation that eliminates the city’s purchasing of bottled water, a savings of $30,000 per year.

Smith said he does not know why not a single commercial property or business uses the city’s services. It might be a failure of marketing; it might be the schedule of fees. The pilot program would seek to discover why.

In the current law as written, he said, the city offers collection of a 96-gallon toter for recycling for an annual $225 fee. Smith suggested that might not be competitive or flexible enough in light of the fact that commercial recyclers offer twice-a-week pick-up, for example.

The legislation he plans to offer in a communication to the Board of Aldermen Monday would make not just 96-gallon toters but Dumpsters available in a variety of lengths from two to six yards.

Click here for a story on the successful roll-out of the city’s recycling reforms for residences. They feature smaller 48 gallon toters for garbage and 96 gallon toters for single-stream recyclables. Every ton of recyclable waste diverted from trash to recycling saves the city $105.

Smith said he will knock on doors of at least 50 business or commercial properties along State and possibly Orange to work out the kinks.

All of this was good news to the ears of Jim Austin, who said he was already an enthusiastic Smith supporter. ​“In my SoHu neighborhood, over 80 trees [have been planted through URI]. That’s huge,” he said. ​“More recycling and green trees, that is exciting.”

Former Ward 9 Alderman Frew, who introduced Smith to the crowd and who owns many properties in the area, said he had never even heard of the option to recycle with the city. ​“I think it’s a great idea if it’s [at a] reasonable cost,” he said.

Other issues that Smith said he was going to advance should he be elected to a first full term include: co-sponsoring legislation advancing a living wage, and prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.

The living wage bill is up for a vote at Monday night’s Board of Aldermen meeting. The anti-discrimination proposal, co-sponsored with Aldermen Michael Jones and Justin Elicker, is waiting for committee action.

On the gender identity non-discrimination legislation, Holmes said, ​“There’s some movement on this at the state, and I hope it also moves ahead in the city.”

Many attendees to the rally mentioned to a reporter that Smith had earned his spurs as an aldermen in a variety of ways but the most cited was his work during the severe snowstorms of last winter. That included doing a lot of shoveling himself. He pressed City Hall to do a better job.

“We love Matt because he’s our home grown advocate. He proved it during the snow storm.”

Asked what he might have done better during his tenure thus far as Ward 9 alderman, Smith pondered for a second, the said, ​“I should have prayed harder for less snow.”