Woolsey Launches Petition to End Commercial Trash Collection

As anticipated, Selectman Mary-Louise Woolsey will sponsor a private petitioned warrant article at next year's town meeting in the hopes it will — in her words — get "Hampton out of the commercial waste pickup business."

Woolsey has been a vocal critic of the town's approach to commercial waste collection, as she feels it isn't right for residents to subsidize what she has said should be a regular "business expense" for anyone making money off of a structure in Hampton.

Selectmen recently decided not to further explore the option of completely discontinuing commercial trash pickups, and Woolsey was the only board member to vote against the motion to remove the option from the table.

Woolsey is now circulating the petition for her article, which also calls for the discontinuation of "all" town-run curbside recycling service at commercial and retail locations.

All petitioned warrant articles for the March 2014 town meeting are due to the town by the end of business Wednesday.

Woolsey explains her warrant article in the following 15 bullet points found on the back of the petition she is circulating (Editor's note: The language and punctuation used below is exactly how it appears on the petition):

1. Towns are mandated only  to provide a place for residents/businesses to dump waste, there are NO  requirements  in NH for public pickup
2. Very few communities in NH pick up commercial waste per Town Manager Welch
3. Not a town vs. beach issue – discontinuing commercial waste pickup applies to entire town
4. Space constraints are not an issue- the taxpayers did not dictate the size of commercial lots
5. Businesses which have been, and are still paying to dispose of their own waste  have NEVER received a tax break
6. FAIRNESS – residents and self-sustaining businesses are being taxed to support other businesses which have received free trash pickup multiple times per week for YEARS
7. Businesses can drop off their waste at our Transfer Station and pay commercial rate
8. Businesses can drop off their recyclables at our Transfer Station at no charge
9. Businesses  can add removing  waste to their cost of operating, and hire a private hauler
10. Not a public problem how many months businesses are open or whether they succeed –  it’s called “private enterprise”
11. A plague of rats and vermin will not hit the beach if town pickup of waste stops 
12. We need to have employees devoting their time to highway and community maintenance. Exeter has a permanent  15 man highway crew.  We had 3 men available for highway work all summer. We need a more cost-effective use of our Public Works budget and resources.
13. Unrealistic and expensive to expect DPW to create a special computer program to track public commercial waste collection, track frequency of collection, assign “per cart” fees, accept and track payments, pay to “retrofit” packers and install computer chips in carts to track volume of waste (est. cost $160,000), continue to collect up to 7 days a week commercial waste and recyclables at curbside.   DPW currently spends 40-50% of its resources on waste .
14. And there is a final option open to any Board – do nothing, leave everything “as is”, and wait for someone in the future to pick up the can that’s been kicked down the road
15. The time has come for us as a community to work out a smarter way to manage our municipal Public Works business.