New Haven Independent

The public hearing was tentatively set for the week of May 19 on the authority’s first-year budget. The amount of that budget is still up in the air because contracts are still being negotiated with many of the vendors from which the authority would purchase services.

The agenda facing the authority board Monday night included:
• Approval of the proposed $6 million sale of the assets of the city’s solid waste infrastructure to the authority and the approval of those documents;
• Issuance of up to $10.5 million in bonds by the authority to pay for buying the trash and recyclables business from the city and the authority’s operations;
• Selection of Wachovia Bank as underwriters of the bonds;
• Selection of Public Finance Management Inc. as “financial advisers for the authority in connection with the issuance of the bonds”;
• Selection of a firm to serve as accountants for the authority;
• Selection of the Hartford-based law firm of Robinson & Cole as general counsel. Members of that firm have already been working on authority business under other agreements;
• Selection of Malcolm Pirnie Inc. of White Plains, N.Y., to serve as consultants.

Only the last two items were approved, mostly because the board had not had time to acquire the information needed to make its decisions on the other items. For example, the Wachovia proposal did not include counsel fees the bank may charge.

Malcolm Pirnie’s proposal was approved at a cost of $71,000 for pay for the firm’s responding to questions, evaluating responses and making recommendations on the request for proposal to run the transfer station and to haul and dispose of waste for the new authority. The authority’s board approved the Pirnie proposal, which board chairman Dolan quipped was “to hold our hands, basically.” Bids to run the station and haul the waste are due May 19.

The authority’s five-person board hopes to take care of most of the other items it couldn’t approve Monday at its next meeting in early May, Dolan said.

The board, which had held its first meeting April 9, used a bit of ingenuity to get a quorum at Monday’s meeting. Dolan and board members Anika Singh and Konstantine Drakonakis slogged their way through the rainy, windy evening, but they were still short one person. So Alderman Gerald Antunes, a board member, was hooked up by cell phone (pictured). Such telephonic attendance and voting is allowed by the authority’s bylaws, Dolan said. Antunes claimed he hadn’t received notice of the meeting. Board members’ attempts to reach member Don Walker by phone Monday night were unsuccessful.

There are two vacancies on the board. Board members blamed those vacancies for part of the difficulty getting their quorum Monday.

The $6 million asset-sale resolution called for the executive director of the authority to lead negotiations with the city. The city’s point man for the negotiations is the director of public works.

John Prokop holds both jobs.

“Would that not make the executive director both buyer and seller?” Dolar dryly inquired of authority general counsel Glenn A. Santoro. Santoro could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Board member Anika Singh, a lawyer at Wiggin and Dana in New Haven, agreed to be the authority’s point person for the negotiations on the asset sale.

Prokop, who attended the board meeting, said after the meeting that he was relieved not to carry both roles in the negotiation on the sale of the city’s trash and recycling business to the authority.

“That was the way the ordinance was created,” he shrugged. He quickly added that even if he conducted the negotiations for both sides, city and authority board members would have had to approve anything he did.

He said the public would not be impacted by the transfer of ownership from the city to the quasi-public authority, at least not right away. The way the trash and recyclables were picked up would not change just because another entity was in charge.

Prokop said he hoped eventually that plans he and others are kicking around would have a positive impact on both the financial bottom line and the environment.

Read about the recent history of the authority and the solid waste problem here, here, and here.

One proposal would turn the 96-gallon garbage containers each city household now uses into containers for recyclables. The authority would use a single-stream method of recycling, which means that all recyclable material could be dumped into the container without bothering to separate plastics, for example, from paper. That separation is now required.

That would work because the recycled material would be separated after it is shipped out of the city, so city workers wouldn’t have to separate it. There would be no need for separate recycling trucks because garbage trucks could be used to haul and compact the recyclable material. Of course, the trucks would not haul garbage and recyclables at the same time.

The authority would, under this plan, distribute containers for garbage that would be about half the size of the present big blue garbage containers. Because recycling would be easier, more people would recycle, reducing the amount of garbage and trash and making the need for large garbage cans unnecessary, Prokop said.

The city now pays $93 a ton to haul garbage and $23 a ton to get rid of recyclables. Because recycled materials are worth more than they were when the present recycling contract was negotiated more than a decade ago, and because the increase in recycling would mean less garbage was being collected, the city would save about $930,000 a year under the new plan, as Prokop sees it.

He hopes to increase recycling from the dismal 8 percent up to 20 percent in a couple of years. The switch to larger recycling containers and smaller garbage containers would be tried in perhaps one-third of the city, according to the plan being kicked around, Prokop said. He could not say when any of these plans would be put into effect.

Dolan said the board would have the final say about the terms of the waste-hauling and handling contracts, which must be signed by the end of the year. “We need to see proposals,” he said.