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Legislator Tamagna's Recycling Cuts
Dear Editor:
I wanted to address a few issues raised in last week's paper by Lisa Sabin concerning Legislator Tamagna's proposal for cutting the County Recycling program. First, the County Recycling Department is .28 % of the current budget, or $340,000 out of the $121.3 million total budget, not the 2% that she states is. Lisa's amount of $300,000 for recycling may exclude the salary for the Keep Putnam Clean litter patrol director.
In a widely distributed e-mail, Tamagna spoke in favor of a plan to give "block grants" to Towns and Villages for recycling. In her letter regarding the Tamgna plan, Lisa states that "Under his proposal, the costs of recycling would be reduced from $300,000 to $75,000- a savings of $225,000!" It sounds too good to be true, and it is. The "block grants" mentioned in this plan would have to come out of the $75,000, or else there wouldn't be a $225,000 savings. Not only would that eliminate the County Department entirely, leaving $0 for it, but when you divide $75,000 by 9 Towns it leaves less then $8,400 for the much hyped "block grants".
More important, however, is that the County would be breaking State Law by cutting the Recycling Department. A week and a half ago (9/28/07) The Department of Environmental Conservation sent a strongly worded letter to the County Legislature warning them that "If the Legislature cancels the recycling program as a result of its budget decisions…the Department will refer the matter to the New York State Attorney General's office for enforcement." The letter's author, William Janeway, spoke at the Legislature's extremely important Public Hearing on the 2008 Budget. With an overflow crowd in attendance he emphasized the legal obligations of the County to keep its program intact. Legislator Tamagna did not attend this hearing.
The County Recycling Program is important for Philipstown. The Program Director helped Betty Budney set up our Town recycling center and has helped me with expanding recycling in the Village. The County Department sets-up and manages School recycling in Schools including Haldane and Garrison, and runs recycling and environmental education programs at them. The County Recycling Center in Carmel accepts items like computers and electronics, items that would be inefficient and costprohibitive to recycle in each Town. The Towns and Villages can now arrange to collect those items locally and then transport them in one vehicle to Carmel.
The Recycling Director is mandated to implement the County Waste Management Plan (adopted as law), which calls for the County to expand recycling, with satellite collections centers in each Town and a central aggregation center for the Towns to use. Not only is this Plan the law, but it makes a whole lot of sense fiscally and environmentally. Cutting what little of it has been implemented would be a real step backwards for Philipstown and the County as a whole.
Seth Gallagher
Cold Spring
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