HAMMONTONDuring its regular meeting on December 22, the Hammonton Town Council unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing a five-year inter-local service agreement for a single-stream recycling program from the Atlantic County Utilities Authority. According to Councilman Edward Wuillermin, the five-year, $207,000-per-year agreement includes the ACUA providing exclusive recycling toters for town residents. In the past, contracts were signed on a one-year basis. Scheduled to begin January 1, 2009, the single-stream recycling program will allow for the acceptance of a wider range of recycling materials which will decrease the towns tipping fees for solid waste trash, according to Wuillermin. One major concern by the Public Works Committee was the impact on the residents with the additional volume of recycling material, as such, the proposed agreement with the ACUA included the supply of 4,800 96-gallon toters to the residents.
After many years of attacking and ridiculing previous administrations and school boards for taking similar actions, the Town has entered into a long term no-bid contract. Is it because they finally understand that when these previous officials took the same actions, it was to save the taxpayers money? Let's hope so. The public has not been provided any of the details of this proposal yet, so we can only hope we have been protected from large increases over the next five years.
It is also interesting how supportive the Gazette is being after being even louder in their attacks when other regimes have done this in the past. Of course, their is no doubt or question as to their motives.
As taxpayers, we can only hope that a contract being awarded for more than $1 million with no competitive bidding was a smart move for us. On the surface it seems so, but only time will tell.
No, that turned out to be a savings to the town and the Hammonton taxpayer. Not getting the bid did nothing to me or the company I work for. We moved on to other contracts. Not getting contracts is just a fact of life in the business we are in.
