“Four years ago, when I finally agreed to take on the department head role for the transfer station, it was very obvious that some major changes had to be made relatively quickly or the transfer station was in jeopardy of closing,” reported Saugerties Highway Superintendent Doug Myer at the Town Board meeting on March 17. The first step was to reduce staffing by 25 percent. Then came a cessation of outsourcing transportation, a $60,000 per-year cost and a “massive” recycling program. “Not only is recycling environmentally friendly, it doesn’t end up in the municipal solid waste stream. It doesn’t cost the town anything.”
Specifically, Myer said the department uses a paper compactor to reduce the volume. Corrugated cardboard is held until the market price is sufficient to cover the costs. Otherwise, the cardboard goes to Westchester County where it can be disposed of without cost. “We have containers for glass of different colors; we have dual-stream plastic,” said Myer. “This year, 393 tons of material was recycled, rather than going into landfills. That saved us $105 per ton for a total of $41,000 this year. We also have an organic recycling program. We were one of the first in Ulster County to do it and we’re in our second year. We don’t do huge volumes, but it did increase by 104 percent.”
Myer said he is happy with the year’s work. “I didn’t think it would turn around as quickly as it has, but what I have here is a condensed deposit and expenditure report. In a nutshell, we took in $464,643 in 2020. Operating expenses were $339,366, which left a balance of $125,000.
After the cost of payment on a bond anticipation note for containers to haul garbage instead of hiring it out, the purchase of a roll-off trailer and a contract with the highway department to haul the garbage, “that’s about $60,000 per year,” Myer said. “After all the expenses for the year, I was able to put $93,457 back into the general fund.”
Supervisor Fred Costello agreed that at the beginning of the highway superintendent’s term, the town had considered closing the landfill, and he thanked Myer for bringing it back to solvency.
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