The Board of Health discussed improving the Transfer Station sticker process at its monthly meeting Tuesday night at the Marry Alley Municipal Building.
The discussion came after multiple incidents occurred at the Transfer Station involving alleged altercations and harassment of workers who were stopping cars without facility stickers. At prior meetings, the board has discussed issues with residents using the facility without stickers, costing the town money.
Board member Tom McMahon, who has been outspoken about making sure that every person using the facility has a sticker, said that he spoke with a former Transfer Station employee who has had compliance issues with those looking to use the facility.
“I was like, ‘What’s the worst part of your job?’ and she said ‘the people,’ and she means the community just giving her a real hard time,” McMahon said.
McMahon said he was a proponent of using a stickerless scanning system, one of the options that Health Director Andrew Petty presented. McMahon said that this system would work to reduce incidents between workers and community members.
Petty said that the stickerless process would involve community members registering through a computer system, and as they enter the facility, their license plate would be scanned. If a resident is not on the list prior to using the facility, an email or text alert would be sent to employees within the facility.
He said that the issue with this method would be that employees would then have to track down the car and have a discussion with the person, creating unnecessary work and putting an extra burden on employees.
Instead, Petty recommended that the easiest solution is to have someone constantly checking stickers.
“Really the easiest system is that every car that enters the facility … should have a sticker on it, in an easy location, and we can see it,” Petty said. “There needs to be an employee that checks those stickers, and that’s all they do essentially.”
Because the stickers, which go into effect on Jan. 1 and run for the entire year, have already been ordered, Petty said whatever the new system ends up being will start in 2025.
McMahon warned that whoever is manning the sticker check needs to be from out of town so that they avoid doing “favors” for those in town without a sticker. Even still, he said those workers would still be subject to verbal abuse.
“You’re going to run into that with whoever you hire,” McMahon said. “It’s a very specific person you need and they’re still going to get harassed.”
“You also need backup for that person, which is why I lean toward the sticker reader,” he added.
Earlier in the discussion, Petty said that the Transfer Station is lacking enough employees to run the facility at its full potential. He said that if multiple employees miss time, he would need to allocate workers to other areas, potentially leaving the sticker check position unmanned and creating more issues.
Board member Joanne Miller called the facility issues a “resident problem” rather than a sticker problem, citing that those who verbally or physically attack town employees need to be held accountable.
“If anyone is going to come use this facility and choses to treat our employees with anything less than respect, I think there’s got to be a consequence,” Miller said. “The sticker is not the problem, it’s the fact that our employees are being assaulted and treated terribly when people go to be told that they need a sticker.”
Petty said that at the new facility, which is set to begin construction in the fall, there will be surveillance cameras covering the area.
After the discussion, the board agreed to make a number of changes to the sticker, including having the town name removed and adding the driver’s license number and license plate number on the sticker.