Medford’s plan to minimize trash assortment in half is producing a stench that has turned the Larger Boston metropolis right into a nationwide “laughingstock,” in accordance with metropolis councilors who’re rebutting the mayor’s declare that they accepted the rollback.
Turmoil has erupted after Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and different officers introduced that the town is ready to implement biweekly waste assortment in July 2027, with the rollback surfacing in nationwide and worldwide headlines after the Herald first reported on the plan.
Comic Seth Meyers has even picked up on the controversy.
“The mayor of Medford, Massachusetts, recently announced a new waste removal program, which will reduce trash pickups to once every two weeks, but it’s Massachusetts,” Meyers mentioned Tuesday on his late-night present on NBC, “so bottle recycling is still every day.”
Lungo-Koehn is responding to the uproar.
On Wednesday afternoon, the mayor posted a video on social media, seeking to “calm some fears and some anger” over a trash contract that institutes the biweekly trash pickup, a transfer she mentioned the town’s strong waste process power beneficial in 2022.
Lungo-Koehn then claimed that officers “publicly” offered the contract earlier than the Metropolis Council accepted it in July 2023.
“The contract we signed does have us collecting trash every other week,” the mayor mentioned, “but not until July 1, 2027. So that’s over 19 months away with plenty of time for us to talk about it and make adjustments.”
Metropolis Council President Zac Bears and Councilor Justin Tseng rapidly responded to the mayor’s video, arguing that the council by no means accepted a particular contract, however relatively, approved Lungo-Koehn to enter into one.
“I’m also disappointed by the Mayor’s continued attempts to pass the buck and point fingers at the City Council to shift blame for this decision,” Bears said in a social media submit. “To be clear, … only the Mayor has the legal authority to change course.”
In a separate submit, Tseng vowed that he stays “committed to a Medford that tackles climate change with the community … not as a laughingstock on national TV.” The councilor added that the council’s vote in July 2023 was required by state procurement regulation, “allowing the Mayor to negotiate a 10-year waste contract.”
“As our official meeting record states,” Tseng wrote, “this was not a vote on any specific contract, and the Council first learned of the administration’s final decision at the same time many of you did: through paragraph 11 of a press release.”
The Metropolis Council and residents are taking exception to how Lungo-Koehn and officers formally introduced the scale-back from the present weekly trash assortment.
Officers issued a press launch on Nov. 13 highlighting how the town secured a $200,000 grant from the state Division of Environmental Safety to help its so-called “zero waste” initiatives.
The discharge coated how the grant is the second that the state DEP has issued to the town to buy curbside organics assortment carts. In 2024, the state helped launch Medford’s residential compost assortment program with an preliminary award.
“We were deciding how to be transparent about this and hadn’t discussed this since 2023 publicly,” Lungo-Koehn mentioned in her video. “So, although I wanted to do it sooner than later, we probably should have separated it from the release that went out with the good news about the $200,000 grant. I do take responsibility for that.”
Beneath the brand new service, residential 64-gallon trash carts might be collected each different week, together with recycling at no cost, starting in July 2027. Officers say the baseline will “equate to 32 gallons per household per week.” Residents may proceed to lease extra 64-gallon trash and 96-gallon recycling carts.
That service quantity, officers say, meets the state’s standards for the DEP’s “Pay As You Throw” program, making the town eligible for the grants.
Shifting to a biweekly assortment would save the town over $1 million per yr at a time when disposal prices are rising, officers have harassed.
The town has scheduled neighborhood conferences in December and January to debate the plan.
“Whether you think this change is a bad idea, no matter what, or potentially has some merits,” Bears, the Metropolis Council president, mentioned, “the fact that Medford’s trash removal policy has gotten so much negative attention in national and local news and was joked about on national broadcast TV … is a colossal communications failure and undermines the trust of residents.”
