Somewhere in our code it is written that all residential recycling must be placed securely in a container or it won't be picked up. All boxes are supposed to be flattened, too. DPW stopped selling blue recycling bins years ago. Now anything goes because no one cares and Rob Perry isn't paying attention. Think our DPW Superintendent cares how much litter is produced by recycling, much of it produced by cardboard boxes full of recycling that easily get blown over in the wind? HA!
If there was this much recycling litter in one short section of Rope Alley this morning, what do the rest of the city's alleys and streets look like?
Until about 5 years ago, the Columbia County Solid Waste Department didn't charge anyone to drop off recycling at their transfer stations. It was essentially free to recycle, including for our DPW to drop off truckloads of recycling at the Greenport station every Wednesday and Thursday. Now DPW pays the county $90/ton to take our cans, bottles and paper far away so that we don't have to see them, smell them or bury them in a landfill on the outskirts of town. This is a significant added expense that the city has done nothing to recoup (except raise the property tax rate). Sometime early last year at a Finance Committee meeting, I heard Margaret Morris say something about this issue as if she wanted to actually get something done to cover the new cost of recycling. Then I heard nothing. Then she and the rest of the council, as I recall, approved another tax increase and were forced to officially approve a 2026 city budget they had already voted to not approve. (The issue was a missed deadline.) What will happen when the tipping fee for recycling raises to $100/ton or $120/ton, which it eventually will? Raise property taxes again to cover the added expense?
Do you think Rob Perry cares if residents put out their recycling in plastic bags? HA!
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