Recycling kicks off Pike election campaign

David Hulse
Posted 8/21/12

MILFORD, PA — Last week, April arrived with the beginning of debate for Pike County’s 2015 election campaign.

The first issue to ignite the discussion was the commissioners’ October 2012 …

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Recycling kicks off Pike election campaign

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MILFORD, PA — Last week, April arrived with the beginning of debate for Pike County’s 2015 election campaign.

The first issue to ignite the discussion was the commissioners’ October 2012 decision to end Pike’s municipal recycling program.

In their online March 19 op-ed, Democrat challengers Steve Guccini and David Ruby wrote that the program made “six-figure profits” until the commissioners decided to outsource recycling to private haulers in late 2009. They leveled charges of “gross mismanagement” that cost taxpayers a “significant sum of money and access to an important county service.” They vowed efforts to reinstate the county program.

County figures show that the program, begun in 2000, was initially profitable; averaging about $130,000 annually between 2003 and 2008. However, from 2009 to 2011 it lost nearly $1.3 million.

Challengers’ charges last week prompted Republican incumbents Rich Caridi and Matt Osterberg to refute them with the reissue of the 13-page, August 2012 press release packet announcing the end of the program, along with a new 15-page chronology of the program.

The press packet said the decision to end the program was based on the loss of state grants that helped fund it and decreased administrative fees from landfills, as well as increased county expenses in 2010 due to “the privatization of the county recycling program.”

Commissioner Caridi said private haulers began offering curb-side single-stream recycling as an alternative to the county’s drop-off sites, which required the purchase of trucks and payroll for employees to service them. He added that additional haulers have since expanded those services.

Osterberg noted that the county was also responsible for the costs of cleanup of non-recyclables left at county sites.

“Why would we be taxing when the service is being provided? It made no sense,” Caridi said.

Neither Caridi nor Osterberg cited their likely fall opponents in their comments. Caridi said their response was about issues, not names.

Caridi said it was “hurtful to be maligned for something you haven’t done.”

Asked if the issue had come up because of the election, he said “It’s never been an issue before.”

Democrat Commissioner Karl Wagner, who is not seeking re-election, came closest to a political response. He said, “Incumbents are questioned every four years when others are running. If you criticize incumbents, you got to be accurate.”

Wagner said the challengers’ letter was “composed without the facts.”

This week the challengers renewed their charges saying the commissioners’ response “failed to disclose additional public information that contradicts several of their assertions.”

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