Minutes of 4/06/09

Approved 6/08/09

The meeting was called to order at 7:19.

Jim Vaillancourt,  Ben Edwards, Lucy Edwards and Doug Chamberlin were in attendance.
Margaret Walker was excused.  Bob Holden filled in as selectmen’s rep, since he had come to sign paperwork and let us into the town hall. Kathy Bailey from the Union Leader was a guest.

The minutes of the March meeting were approved unanimously.

The first item of discussion was how to develop a cash register cashing out procedure for recyclables to present to the board of selectmen.  Jim Vaillancourt has been working on this but asked the committee for more time.  He needs to figure out how to use the memory chip for the register, and make sure that he can transfer the detail we need to a spreadsheet.  Jim had wanted Steve Preston to cash out daily, but Steve wants to do it weekly because he doesn’t collect money every day.  Unless we can get enough daily detail from the reports we can’t track the demolition recycling that way, because we can’t reconcile the amount brought in for each container, so we can see if we are charging the correct amount.  Jim hasn’t had a chance to try the memory chip after the cash register has been used for a while.

The committee had a long discussion of what we are trying to do here and why, for the benefit of Mr. Holden, and to make sure all members completely understood the process we are looking at.  We also talked about the way demolition debris fees are calculated, and whether at some point we should go by weight, which would involve getting a set of scales.

The committee discussed what newsletters articles were already in the works, Margaret Walker’s composting article, and a revised map.  Jim would like to include an article on plastic recycling, to explain why and how we are doing this as the commodities market changes.

Jim presented his reasons for considering renaming the Swap Shop to make it clear that only items that someone might actually want to use be deposited there.  We no longer have the problem of people leaving things that should be paid for, but we are still getting items that are not useful.  Jim suggested we call it the Still Good Shed.  We should at least have a newsletter article on what the Swap Shop is for.

We discussed doing a tool swap in June, where people can bring extra working tools they no longer need for others to take, such as garden implements, hand tools, etc.  We agreed that if Steve Preston can find a storage space so that people can drop things off during the week before the Saturday scheduled, the committee would be willing to set up the tables to display the items and monitor the process.  We will continue to plan this.

Lucy Edwards will get a date for the committee to present information to the public at the Farmers Market this summer.

The Freecycle Group account, not a project of the committee itself, is progressing and should be set up soon.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 4th.  The meeting adjourned at 8:30.

Respectfully submitted,
  Lucy Edwards