Thomas MacMillan Photo
Then-Alderman Matt Smith.
Six months after it was introduced, and after its champion has stepped down as alderman, a commercial recycling plan is poised for passage — in a drastically reduced form.
The Board of Aldermen Monday night did a first reading of a bill that will allow businesses and apartment buildings to buy multiple recycling toters. The proposal, which received the approval of the Finance Committee last week, is designed to increase recycling rates in the city. (A first reading means the proposal has landed on the full board’s agenda for a future vote.)
Matt Smith, the now-former East Rock alderman, first started working on the matter back in June. During an unsuccessful bid for reelection, Smith pitched the idea as a money-maker that would funnel money towards the city’s tree-planting efforts. Read more about the bill’s progress here.
Smith had proposed allowing businesses to pay the city to remove two‑, three‑, and six-yard dumpsters full of recycling. The idea was to help encourage commercial and multi-unit residential properties to recycle. They are required to do so under state and municipal law, but few do, and the city doesn’t have the resources to enforce the law.
“Less than 20 percent of the 8,000 commercial businesses in New Haven are recycling,” said John Prokop, head of public works.
Revenue generated by the new recycling plan would have gone to the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) to help pay for its ambitious tree-planting plan, which was pruned back by budget cuts.
But Smith’s initial plan proved to be too expensive. When it landed in front of the Finance Committee last week, it was in an attenuated form.
“We’ve scaled it back a bit,” Smith told his colleagues.
The matter as approved by the Finance Committee will now simply allow commercial properties to buy additional 96-gallon toters, the kind that are issued to homeowners.
Even the part of the plan that would send money to URI was stripped out at the last minute. “Basically that was a procedural snafu on my part,” Smith said. The transfer of money wasn’t properly noticed as an ordinance amendment to the budget, he said. He said he expects it will be fixed by a separate submission to the board.
Under the new plan, businesses can sign up with the city to have public works haul away their recycling for $225 per year, plus a fee of $25 per toter.
Prokop testified in favor of the proposal, along with Giovanni Zinn and Christine Epstein-Tang from the Office of Sustainability and URI’s Chris Ozyck.
Prokop said the city’s fee structure is “more than competitive” with other local recycling haulers.
The new program will support people who would like to recycle but currently don’t have a way to do it, Epstein-Tang said. “This will provide that option.”
A challenge for businesses is finding a place to store the toters, said Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro. Smith agreed.
Carroll Hughes (pictured), a representative of the National Solid Waste Management Association, who has testified against the new plan in the past, urged the city to proceed cautiously by starting with a pilot program in just one neighborhood. “I would suggest that you people walk first before you run.”
Committee members voted unanimously to recommend the plan for approval by the full board, which is expected to vote on it at its next meeting, on Dec. 19.
Meanwhile, Smith can now promote the bill’s passage as City Hall’s new staff liaison to the board.