Minutes of 03/02/09

Approved 04/06/09

The meeting was called to order at 7:06 pm.

Ken Curley, Jim Vaillancourt, Ben Edwards and Lucy Edwards were in attendance. Margaret Walker was out of town.  Doug Chamberlin had another commitment.

A motion was made by Ken Curley to approve the minutes for Feb. 2. Jim Vaillancourt seconded and the motion passed.

The group who wanted to do Freecycle for Northwood backed out.  The parent group Is looking for someone to set up a Freecycle program for Northwood, Nottingham and Deerfield.  JIm Vaillancourt is willing to do this, as a private citizen, outside of the committee. The committee may assist by publicizing the program.

Fred Walker produced a map of the transfer station.  JIm Vaillancourt will bring copies to the town meeting.  The committee reviewed the map and feel it needs a few revisions, but will be a good addition to the information handed out to residents.

Steve Preston and Jim Vaillancourt reviewed all the invoices and Jim produced a spreadsheet with the costs and some of the revenues.  Jim asked Ken Curley to show him where in the annual report the revenue is.  We spent $15552 to dispose of construction debris and furniture, but from the available figures only brought in $10424 in revenue.

Other recycling fees were $12281.  Collating the figures is not easy given how they have been entered into the financial software of the town. Having the cash register will make it easier to keep track of items brought in he transfer station that are subject to fees.  We need more detail.

The committee discussed how the cash register was working. Ben Edwards had taken a dishwasher to the transfer station and received both a written and a printed receipt.  He asked if receipt could have a heading.  The machine can print up to 4 lines, and the committee decided to have it indicate that it came from the Northwood Recycling Center, and to say Thank You.

This led to a discussion about exactly what we want the cash register to do .  For construction debris it might be useful to have the cubic footage.  There are numerous departments that sort the type of items. The cash register can also indicated who took in the fee.  The next question was what to do with the daily reports that Steve Preston can print.  The committee decided to create a procedure for the selectmen to approve.  The report should go to the finance administrator with the funds collected, and should save her time in entering the information, since she will have totals, rather than a stack of receipts.  Another copy should go to the recycling committee for a spreadsheet to keep track of the amounts and dates.  Once we decide on a procedure we can set up cash register, monitor how it works and report to the selectmen.

We may find that our fees need to be adjusted so that each category becomes self-supporting.  Volume has been increasing enough that we need to have metrics to figure out if we are charging enough.   The reporting from the Lamprey Co-op has decreased in detail recently, so we need to be keeping very good records.

Margaret Walker had collected some information on both home and town composting.  The committee will have copies available for the public at town meeting.  We did decide not to offer home compost bins through the recycling committee but make available the order forms from NRRA.

Jim Vaillancourt suggested that we need Steve Preston to go to a compost seminar to get the info we need to do municipal composting, before we consider offering that, or buying equipment.

Adjournment:  Ben Edwards moved to adjourn at 8:18.  Ken Curley seconded and the motion was approved.

The next meeting will be Monday April 6.