No one likes paying more to throw out their trash. Yet this week’s unanimous vote by the Select Board to raise Transfer Station sticker and bag prices deserves more than the usual grumbling. In this case, officials faced unwelcome facts and acted before the problem got worse.
What stood out was not only the decision, but the clarity of the explanation. Select Board member Eric Ward, working closely with DPW Director Eric Ryder, laid out how the finances are supposed to work and how they have actually been working.
Stickers pay for day‑to‑day operations: staffing, site maintenance, keeping the Transfer Station open. Bags pay for disposal: hauling and tipping fees, the per‑ton charge that a landfill or incinerator charges to accept and process trash.
Ward and Ryder showed that sticker revenue is barely covering operating costs, with little margin. The bag program, however, is running a clear deficit. The town has been paying more to get rid of trash than it has been taking in from bag sales.
Against that backdrop, the new fees make sense, even if they sting. Although sticker sales have declined, a sign that more residents are turning to private companies to haul their trash, the Transfer Station remains a popular feature of town life, the site of fundraisers, canvassing, and socializing.
The $10 increase for nonsenior stickers is a relatively modest step to keep operating revenue aligned with expected expenses. Doubling the bag prices—from $1 to $2 for small bags and from $2 to $4 for large—is a sharper hit, but it targets the actual shortfall on disposal costs.
The board did not pretend any of this would be popular. Members acknowledged residents’ frustration, particularly after some retailers stopped selling bags. They backed a practical fix: a trash bag vending machine at Town Hall or some more convenient location, likely funded through state recycling grants, as a first step toward making bags reliably available again.
Looming in the background are pressures no local board controls: rising regional hauling and tipping fees, and the unknown future costs of addressing PFAS and other contamination associated with the former landfill. It is fair to say the board and DPW were simply doing their jobs.
It is also fair to say that when doing the job means asking residents to pay more, the temptation to delay is strong. This time, they did not. On a tough, unglamorous issue, they faced the math and took responsibility for it.