By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

As businesses, schools and other municipalities begin to reopen after months-long closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, the town of Cicero continues to hold its meetings virtually, closed to public participation. At the Sept. 23 meeting of the Cicero Town Board, some board members questioned Supervisor Bill Meyer’s decision to keep the town on lockdown.

“It’s a huge disservice to the public continuing to have these meetings on Zoom,” Councilor Mike Becallo said.

Becallo read into the record an email from resident Joyce Villnave, who also submitted her email as a letter to the editor of the Star-Review.

“So you’re telling me schoolchildren can go to school and everybody can go to work but you can’t find a place for a town board meeting?” Villnave wrote.

Becallo asked Meyer if the town board and Cicero Planning Board would return to holding meetings in person anytime soon.

“I’m going by the guidance of the governor’s office, the county executive and legal counsel. Based on those recommendations I don’t see that changing in the immediate future,” Meyer said.

Becallo and two of his colleagues on the board balked at Meyer’s answer. Councilor Judy Boyke said inconsistent audio quality makes it difficult for viewers of the town’s Zoom meetings to understand what is going on. She suggested the town hold meetings at the new highway garage on Route 31 to enable public participation, especially as the town’s 2021 budget process begins.

“We should certainly be able to find a way to social distance. There’s room in the cafeteria of the highway garage,” said Boyke, adding that masks would be required.

Councilor Jon Karp noted that other boards have returned to meeting in-person, such as the North Syracuse Central School District Board of Education and the Syracuse Regional Airport Authority. Karp thanked NSCSD BOE member Mike Mirizio for assisting Cicero with conducting Zoom meetings, but he said it is time to bring back public participation.

“There’s a reason why these meetings are supposed to be in person. I think the public has the right to participate and their ability to do so is curtailed by the way this is happening,” Karp said.

Karp added that the board’s discussions are more free-flowing in person compared to connecting across a screen.

The Cicero Town Board scheduled a special town board meeting regarding the 2021 budget for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30.  The meeting will be held virtually and is not open to the public. Visit bit.ly/ciceroyoutube to view the meeting live or after the fact.

OCRRA to create recycling fee

Also at the Sept. 23 meeting, the Cicero Town Board heard a presentation from Dereth Glance, executive director of the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA). Glance gave an overview of OCRRA’s proposal to create a recycling tipping fee.

“We are facing some really significant budget woes,” Glance said. “If you are not following the Chinese impact on the recycling market as closely as I am, they have been really profound and our costs have skyrocketed over the past couple of years.”

Glance said curbside recycling subsidies once accounted for a negligible amount of OCRRA’s budget; the annual expenditure of $300,000 was just above 0% of the budget. However, recycling costs have climbed to 16.2% of OCRRA’s budget this year, and the 2021 cost is projected to be $2.6 million.

“This is unsustainable. We held this for the last three years,” Glance said. “Most other communities don’t have a zero-dollar tip fee for their recyclables. Our board wants to continue to support curbside recyclables, but we want to split it with folks.”

Glance said OCRRA’s waste-to-energy facility does not generate revenue like it used to because of plummeting electricity prices, and “COVID and other factors have also taxed our reserves.”

OCRRA is proposing a recycling tipping fee of $34 per ton. Glance said this would total about $94,000 for Cicero for 2021.

The agency also wants to increase the municipal solid waste (MSW) tipping fee by $5 a ton for the next two years.

“Right now the proposal is to increase the tip fee $5 but to provide certainty over 2021 and 2022,” Glance said. “We figured the most valuable thing we can give you right now is a little bit of certainty because there isn’t much.”

Councilor Judy Boyke said Cicero residents might need additional guidance about what is recyclable and what is not.

“The biggest confusion that seems to be with residents at least in Cicero is they really have no idea about sorting their recyclables. It appears that paper and tin cans seem to be some money that can be had, although the other plastics and glass have no use,” Boyke said.

Glance said OCRRA can provide educational brochures, posters and magnets about sorting trash and recyclables. She said the agency also has a large social media following.

“We have 10,000 followers on Facebook — I mean, we’re a trash agency,” she said.

To learn more about best practices for recycling, composting and trash, visit ocrra.org.