In 2022 Town Meeting members approved a commitment to reduce waste and support environmental justice; and in 2023 a zero waste plan was created, recommending a volume-based fee structure for trash. Both the town and a group of volunteers have worked incredibly hard to create a plan that aims to reduce our trash output and keep the fast-rising costs of trash hauling from becoming a burden on residents. Two years of further work, discussion and multiple community meetings led to the recent approval of Article 31 by 70% of Town Meeting members.
Now, a group wants to undo all that hard work, and force us all to pay more for our trash removal. Costs are rising for trash removal – a 67% increase in just five years. We already pay for trash through our taxes, but every household pays the same portion, whether it is for one bag or six barrels. Is it equitable that a household generating one barrel a week pay the same as a household that generates large amounts of trash? The town will still collect a single barrel without any added fees under the new plan, and there is still time to weigh in on the size of barrel residents prefer.
Lexington’s trash is burned at an incinerator in North Andover and the ash is buried in a landfill in Shrewsbury, whose communities have to deal with any resulting pollution. Wouldn’t reducing the trash being sent to the incinerator be a better way to honor our town’s commitment to environmental justice?
Communities with a volume-based system have been shown to generate less trash, and Lexington already has ways to reduce trash that many residents can take advantage of. Composting is the single best way to reduce the volume of trash at the curb. It reduces the weight of our trash significantly (which also reduces the hauling costs) and is much better for the environment.
My vote on June 16 will be a YES for lowering the costs of trash removal, reducing waste in town, and making trash costs more equitable.
Stephanie Repaci
Lexington already produces some of the least trash in the state because of our excellent recycling program.
I’d like to encourage people to vote NO, and at the same time demand fiscal transparency into where our sky-high property taxes are spent.
You can’t even request an audit of the school spending because it costs $2000 to request copies in an age when everything is digitized.
When the data doesn’t support raising of tax fees for EVERYONE like this, they’l resort to a moral argument like the poster above makes, because it makes them feel morally superior to everyone else who is already doing their best.
Please vote NO. These people are not fiscally responsible, and they lazily choose to just do the easy thing: tax people. There are 50 ideas you could come up with that don’t cost the town so much money and inconvenience people. The reason they don’t is because they feel it is their right to impose their power and moral arguments on people: They were YELLING at residents in the town center this past weekend because people questioned them.
Let’s use logic: bigger houses have more people and produce more trash. Bigger houses already PAY MORE PROPERTY TAXES to cover this. When the logic fails, the YES people look you in the eye, frown, and tell you should “do better” to save the environment.
Vote NO. Vote NO. Vote NO. Or you will open the door to more taxation and unchecked spending.
Remember that these are the same people who voted for a $660m high school, and then tried to fire the very teachers who make the students better. Zero logic and competency. I for one do not want that mentality anywhere near the logistics of trash collection, which works perfectly fine today and which has a budget that is a drop in the bucket of all the other wasteful spending this town does.
VOTE NO!