By David Tyler

The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency has proposed – and the town of Manlius has accepted – a new two-year agreement that includes a new fee for recycling services and increases the fee for trash services.
The new agreement has a new $34 per ton fee for recycling and an increase of $4 per ton for trash. Those fees equate to an annual cost of $12 to $15 per household in the town of Manlius trash district. Those fees were budgeted in the 2021 budget that was passed on November 18.
“In the past, they would actually sell the recyclable material and make a profit doing that,” town attorney Tim Frateschi said. “The market for recyclable material has gone down significantly, in fact, it’s more of a detriment than an asset anymore.”
There’s a county law that requires municipalities that originally opted to use OCRRA as the endpoint for trash and recycling to continue doing so.
“We really don’t have an option to go take our trash somewhere else,” said Councilor Sara Bollinger.
Deer culling agreement approved
The town of Manlius has renewed its agreement with the village of Fayetteville for the annual deer culling program.
The cost of the program to the town is $25,000. Some or all of that may be reimbursed by Onondaga County, which will adopt its budget in early December, but Councilor Karen Green expressed confidence that the county will continue funding the program, despite the county’s fiscal challenges.
Meat from the deer that are culled is given to the Food Bank of Central New York.
“There were over 9,000 meals provided to our local community,” Green said. “It’s a great program. It’s working very well. Traffic accidents continue going down.”