Public mum on trash agency’s 2018 spending plan

The public was silent Wednesday on the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency’s proposed $14.6 million budget for 2018.

In fact, no one from the public attended the scheduled hearing on the budget, which is about 3.6 percent larger than this year’s spending plan but leaves tipping fees and pull charges at current levels.

Tipping fees — the amount the agency charges waste haulers to dispose of what they’ve collected — will remain at $103 per ton for solid waste and construction/demolition debris and $20 per ton for single-stream recyclables.

The budget anticipates $13 million in revenue from tipping fees in 2018, up 1.05 percent from this year.

Pull charges — what the agency charges municipalities for it to empty containers at transfer stations — will remain at $75 per visit next year. The agency’s 2017 budget raised the pull charge by about 21 percent.

Resource Recovery Agency Executive Director Tim Rose said the tipping fees and pull charges can remain at their 2017 levels because the agency has kept its project costs low.

“We’ve done a lot of the work ourselves on capital projects,” he said.

Salaries in the agency’s 2018 budget total $1.64 million, an increase of 5.1 percent from this year. Employee health insurance costs paid by the agency are expected to be $641,891, up 11 percent.

The budget also forecasts huge revenue jumps in two areas: 41.6 percent from fuel surcharges levied on municipalities and 54.7 percent from the sale of materials.