Trash agency board OKs $14.8M budget for 2019

The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency board has adopted a $14.8 million budget for 2019.

The budget is 1.9 percent larger than the agency’s 2018 spending plan, and it keeps tipping fees — the per-ton amount that waste haulers pay the agency to accept trash — at the same levels for the fifth consecutive year: $103 for solid waste, $20 for food waste, and $40 for yard waste.

The budget assumes tipping fee revenue of $13.46 million, an increase of 3.6 percent from the expected 2018 total.

Among cost reductions in the budget is a 33 percent drop for the operation of transfer station, largely because of flood-repair expenses for the sites in 2018.

“We had to do some floor repairs where the concrete work was quite expensive,” agency director Tim Rose said this week. “That only comes up every 15 years or so.”

Expenses in the 2019 budget include:

• $3.3 million for contracts with private haulers, up 6.4 percent from 2018.

• $2.9 million for solid waste disposal, up 5.9 percent.

• $1.8 million in debt payments, down 6.3 percent.

• $1.7 million for wages, up 5.8 percent.

• $750,000 for employee health benefits, up 16.8 percent.

• $703,000 for fuel replenishment, up 3.5 percent.

• $319,000 in insurance costs, down 5.6 percent.

• $265,000 for sewage sludge removal, down 5.9 percent.

On the revenue side, in addition to tipping fees, the budget anticipates:

• $538,000 from fuel surcharges, up 18.4 percent from 2018.

• $239,000 from municipalities for solid waste removal, up 10.8 percent.