NORWAY — Town Manager David Holt announced that this year’s tax assessment on the town will be “lower than anticipated’.
For Norway, about half of the cost of education is raised through property tax.
“When revenues that support education are cut back … that definitely had an impact on us,” said Holt.
Holt attended the school budget meeting, and discovered that the assessment on Norway will be less than it was supposed to be. The overall tax increase that is created by the submitted budget is 2.6 percent.
“Because Norway is growing at a slower rate than other town sin the district, other towns pay a greater share of the cost for SAD 17 education,” said Holt. The cost of education and the cuts made by the budget committee and school budget committee reflect the decrease in the Norway assessment.
A letter from the Oxford County Regional Solid Waste Corporation member Stephen Bies, who is also the representative from Woodstock, to the Norway selectmen informed the board that at the Solid Waste Corporation’s April 9 meeting, the board “voted unanimously to authorize planning for handling singlestream recycling for those member towns who want to recycle that way, beginning Jan. 1, 2015.” According to Selectman Warren P. Sessions, Woodstock is one of the towns that wants to go single- stream.
“If they do, it would put a bigger hurt on Oxford County,” said Sessions about towns going single-stream. “I think there’s still a lot of problems to be ironed out.” Sessions continued to say that there are also good parts of allowing recycling to go singlestream, including subsidizing transportation, which would give the towns a better deal.
The letter informed the board that if Norway chooses to move forward with going single-stream for recycling, familiar Oxford County Regional Recycling bins will still be at the transfer station, but each bin will accept all recyclable materials, rather than one of each material. Bies promised in his letter that normal pick-ups will still be scheduled for the recycling, and it will all still be compacted and sent to a single-stream recycling facility in either Lewiston or South Portland.
“I like the recycling the way it is now,” said Selectboard Chairman Mike Twitchell. “It’s easy.”
“It will be interesting to see how things shake out this summer,” said Sessions. “Norway and Paris citizens do an excellent job.”
AVCOG will be contacting the town to get their thoughts on single-stream recycling.
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