Missed deadline for grant shelves Hazardous Waste Day
By Meghan Carey
mcarey@eagletribune.com
ATKINSON, N.H. — There won't be a Household Hazardous Waste Day this fall because the town didn't apply for the state grant to help fund it.
Town officials announced last week they would not hold the collection because of a lack of state funding. But Road Agent Ted Stewart said yesterday there wasn't any funding because he missed the grant application deadline and thought it was too late.
"I'm not familiar with the system," he said. "I learned the hard way that you have to apply a year in advance of when you are responsible for the project."
Atkinson, Danville, Hampstead, Kingston and Plaistow hold their household hazardous waste days together each year — Plaistow hosts the spring collections and the other towns trade off hosting in the fall.
They typically get up to 50 percent of the funding from the state — or almost $6,000, according to Dean Robinson, the state's household hazardous waste coordinator. In this case, one town usually applies as the grantee and the others do a promissory note saying they will pay their percentage of the cost, he said.
But none of the towns have received the grant recently, Robinson said. Plaistow asked four months too late and the $200,000 in grant money had already been distributed for the 2009 fiscal year, he said.
Kingston applied on time the previous year, but never signed and returned the contract, Robinson said. The grant cycle is announced each October and towns have two months to decide to apply. Robinson can squeeze a town in late, but has to have his numbers finalized by April 1.
He divides up the $200,000 grant based on the populations of towns that applied. It used to be that some smaller towns were denied the small amount of funding they needed, but he said that stopped when he took over last year.
"I try to make sure hazardous waste doesn't go into solid waste (if a town doesn't hold a collection) because it is a health hazard," Robinson said.
Stewart said that he was at a training session in April when he heard from Robinson that the money was no longer available for the current year and may not be in the future. Robinson denied that his funding, which comes from the state hazardous waste cleanup fund, would be cut.
"As far as I know, I haven't heard anything," he said.
Atkinson Town Hall
The Norman Rockwellian picture of Atkinson
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10 comments:
How many years have we been doing this? This is just plain old gross incompetence which is typical of Aktinson lately.
It's not just Atkinson, the surrounding towns are equally at fault.
The elected officals are not qualified to hold their positions.
You mean to tell me the higher "ups" in each town assume that someone in the another town is going to do the necessary paperwork? Doesn't anyone communicate anymore?
Grandiose stupidity, they have no one to blame but themselves yet they escape goat it to something the other town was supposed to do.
Thanks Ted.
I'm no Ted Stewart fan but give the guy a break; it's something he deals with only once every four years. Obviously if every other town missed it as well, the procedure may not be spelled out quite so clearly.
So he missed it, not knowing what was required of the job is not a good excuse.
Being elected for a job does not mean you assume someone else is going to take care of it for you.
As for the other towns missing it too, let those towns deal internally with their elected official and not get into a finger pointing argument trying to say someone else is at fault. Ted has a responsibility to uphold regardless if the other towns do not; it is not like we have never done this before.
I'm surprised to read that it is the road agent's responsibility in Atkinson to arrange for household hazardous waste collections. I don't know for certain about Danville, but I would think this would be a selectmen responsibility.
I just did a search on the Danville web site, and it appears that we last hosted it in October 2005. I don't see involvement by our road agent in various discussions of funding for HHW.
Ours was hosted at the fire association hall in the center of town, not at the highway department garage. I think Plaistow does theirs at their hwy dept facility. I'm just trying to think of any logical reason to put this on the road agent's to-do list.
The fact that Teddy was going to do it, does not change the fact that it is not his job. It is the selectmens job to do.
At least Ted admits to not getting this done... i.e. he says I made a mistake.
Something we never see from the rest of the clowns running this town
So who's job is it? If this is something that the BOS are supposed to do yet scape goat it to someone else, then we have yet a bigger problem.
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