Mike, I do not agree that waste pickup and disposal is a basic service the municipalities must provide. Many municipalities across the nation do not provide such service. Municipal basic services to me are those services that private industry will not or cannot provide to residents at reasonable cost such as police protection and fire protection and some aspects of public works or there is a greater public interest such as schools. I don't have kids in the schools but I benefited from both a public education and a private education and I pay property taxes here in Saugus to support these efforts. I also support demand based services such as water and sewer. Why should my wife and I support the large amount of trash generated by multi-family residences in my neighborhood who don't recycle when we are diligent recyclers putting out a small amount of trash?

I had occasion yesterday to speak with Mr. Jon Norton, Recycling co-ordinator for the City of Everett who had just visited Southbridge to look at their solid waste operation. The City of Everett will soon begin a pilot program on one of their routes with Recycle Bank. My main question to him was since the program requires automated collection of 55 gallon wheeled containers (it is single stream recycling no separation of paper, glass, plastic etc.) How does it work on the heavily parked congested streets of Everett. Mr. Norton said that Recycle Bank looked at the route and said they would deal with it. This pilot effort is being done with the co-operation of Everett's waste hauler Capital Waste Systems and I got the impression that there was no additional cost.

I had looked at Southbridge's web page the other day and their waste disposal scenario is not similar to ours because of the landfill and costs involved with that.

I didn't look at Saugus By-Laws or Solid Waste Regulations but I would be surprsed that recycling isn't already mandatory as it was a requirement of the States Municipal Recycling Incentive Program (a community would receive cash payments based on recycling percentages achieved) run a few years by the state which had a requirement that recycling be mandated in any community that participated in the program. I fairly certain the Town Saugus did participate.

In regards to your point that dumping in the woods increases. It did surprise me a few years ago when I visited the City of Worcester to see a yellow payT bag along with other dumped material in an area next to a park, but my experience are that the majority of scofflaws dumping are commercial contractors that not only dump but also have charged there clients for disposal of waste generated from the job.