HUDseen: Recycling Isn't "Free" Anymore, But You Wouldn't Know It!

If there's one thing that a city can count on it is for department heads to spend money unwisely when there is little or no oversight of expenditures. To guard against wastefulness and inefficiencies where mayors are no help, there are such positions as city managers and administrators, neither of which Hudson City Hall employs. But the past and present situation at the Hudson DPW regarding their handling of recycling is a case in point of why it is high time to seriously consider ditching the Mayor's Office for a competent City Manager.

6 or 7 years ago at a DPW Committee meeting (yes, remember those!!), I asked DPW Superintendent Robert Perry why he had a crew of 3 picking up recycling all over town on Tuesdays when only Wednesdays and Thursdays were the scheduled recycling days. He replied that since there were so many businesses -- primarily restaurants -- putting out so much in the way of recycling for pick up that his department had to get a "head start" on the recycling or they would be overwhelmed by it on Wednesdays. "But why are you even picking up recycling from businesses and restaurants?" I asked. Perry replied that if recycling material (boxes, cans, bottles, etc) is put out for pickup, his crew must take it away, no matter where it comes from. DPW's approach to recycling is this: If it's at the curb or in an alley and not in a dumpster, DPW must remove it.

At a different meeting, I heard Mr. Perry say that the profits from the sales of the city' blue trash bags help fund DPW's garbage and recycling collection services.

Until about 4 or 5 years ago, DPW paid nothing to the Columbia County Solid Waste Department to drop off at the county transfer station in Greenport all of the recycling waste collected from Hudson residents and businesses. Of course, there were cost related to collecting the material (truck, gas, crew, etc), but recycling was considered "free." That is no longer the case at all. We currently pay the CCSWD a whopping $80/ton to drop our recycling off in Greenport. The garbage that DPW collects (blue bags, garbage from public trash cans, alley trash, etc) costs us $101/ton to get rid of there. It's true -- it costs nearly as much to dispose of Hudson's recycling as it is to dispose of our garbage. But nothing has changed in terms of how our DPW approaches their recycling collection efforts.

Restaurants and businesses all over town take advantage of DPW's largesse by putting out recycling regularly -- often huge piles of it, much more than any single household produces -- and DPW gladly takes it all away at $80/ton every Tuesday morning and afternoon, no questions asked. Taxpayers pay to have our city remove their recycling material even though the businesses don't buy blue bags and they don't pay taxes meant to fund our DPW or any other departments. Hudson taxpayers and blue bag users essentially subsidize the removal of recycling waste produced by restaurants and other commercial entities - no matter the amount produced. Taken together, the amount of recycling waste these businesses do not pay to have removed is impressive. You'd think that Robert Perry and the mayor are still under the impression that recycling is "free." Here are some of the beneficiaries of DPW's approach to recycling.

Kitty's Cafe pays a private hauler to handle its
garbage but taxpayers pay to remove their
numerous boxes.

Ditto for the Rolling Grocer

Free recycling for Olde Hudson.

Every day of the week, Baba Louie's will have their recycling
waiting in the alley for DPW to take away free of charge.
Placing recycling out 12 hours prior to pickup is a
code violation. Imagine if everyone did this.

A DPW crew of 3 removed this last Tuesday.
It could have been 5 or 10 times as much, and
DPW still would have removed it.

But not all businesses leave recycling out for our DPW to remove every Tuesday -- some actually use dumpsters for recycling provided by their garbage haulers. Take the Back Bar, for instance. They have two dumpsters for recycling and one for garbage -- and they pay a hauler to empty them. (Waste haulers are required by law to provide recycling services.) The Back Bar could just as easily leave their recycling out for DPW to remove every Tuesday free of charge, but they choose not to. Grazin' Diner, CVS and the Rivertown Lodge, among some others, also choose to pay their trash haulers to recycle their waste.

Hudson taxpayers do not pay for the removal
of the Back Bar's recycling waste, but we
could be paying for it.

The Maker pays to have its recycling
waste removed.

If you feel that taxes are too high in Hudson, or wonder why the council recently voted to approve a slight tax rate increase, remember that on every single Tuesday of the year a portion of your taxes is going toward a DPW crew of 3 workers in a gas-guzzling garbage truck being paid $20/hour to get a "head start" on collecting any and all recycling waste that businesses and restaurants put out to have removed for free so that they don't have to pay their trash hauler to do it instead. The DPW crew then drives the recycling waste to Greenport where the city will be charged $80/ton to get rid of it. Every Tuesday! This makes no sense, and only shows that Hudson City Hall is not at all paying attention to the important details and is in need of better oversight and proper fiscal management. There should be no option for businesses, especially restaurants, to have their recycling waste picked up by the city. DPW simply should not be doing it -- even when recycling was "free" they shouldn't have been doing it. A competent city manager or administrator would agree with me completely, and likely know to ask, "Where else is the DPW and other departments being so wasteful with revenues?" This is a question our mayor is obviously not interested in asking or pursuing. It's not part of his job, and therein lies the problem.