The Chittenden Solid Waste District is hoping voters on Tuesday will pick up a special election ballot to approve a $22 million bond for a larger, more modern recycling facility in Williston.
Its efforts to promote the bond have been complicated by the fact that the item was not included with the general election ballot mailed out to voters.
“Changes to Vermont election law prohibited our ballot item from being included on the General Election ballot,” waste district spokesperson Michele Morris said in an email. “We also could not mail it ourselves to voters.”
This is the first general election since universal ballot mailing became permanent, and the new state law contains “an explicit list of municipal entities that may, by a vote of their Legislative bodies, mail a ballot to voters,” said Eric Covey, chief of staff at the Secretary of State’s Office.
Those entities include any town, city, village or school board after receiving the approval of the legislative body of each member town in the district. But solid waste districts aren’t on that list, and adding them would require a change to the law, according to Covey.
This has led to some confusion among early voters in the county. But Chittenden County residents, including those who’ve already cast general election ballots, can still vote on the new recycling facility by going to a polling place Tuesday.
Barbara Mines, a Burlington resident, was checking the city’s website after mailing in her ballot last month. “That’s when I saw where it said the ballot for the bond had to be requested. So I did,” she said via email.
To help inform her neighbors, Mines posted on Front Porch Forum letting voters know they should ask for the waste district ballot. “Not sure how much good it will do but I feel I tried,” she said, adding that it “feels wrong” that all registered voters do not know to request the ballot.
Only about 350 of the mail-in voters in Essex town and Essex Junction respectively requested the CSWD ballot, according to Susan McNamara-Hill, the town clerk.
The district ran a campaign outlining the ways residents could vote and advertised the information at public forums, on social media, with op-eds and letters. Morris pointed to an online fact sheet and Q&A.
District officials have said the bond, if approved, would not affect residents’ taxes because the district intends to cover the cost through revenue from the materials recovery facility. The total cost is estimated at $26 million but the district needs to borrow $22 million, Morris said.
Built in 1993, the current facility is outdated and cannot be expanded, Morris said. Designed to process 25,000 tons of material, it now receives about 47,000 tons annually. It lacks standard sorting and quality control technology common in most such facilities and still uses workers to hand-sort items.
The district’s board has determined “a clear and pressing need” for a new facility that will continue meeting recycling needs in Chittenden County and beyond, Morris said.