Reynoso floats proposal for NYC trash-collection fee

Says City Could Charge Homeowners for Garbage Pickups, Quaglione trashes idea

July 18, 2017 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Republican City Council candidate John Quaglione says he will fight any effort by the city to charge homeowners a fee to pick up their garbage. Eagle photo by Paula Katinas

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New Yorkers could be paying the city a fee for having the Department of Sanitation pick up their household trash if a proposal being championed by a City Council member ever becomes law.

Councilmember Antonio Reynoso (D-Bushwick), chairman of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, told the New York League of Conservation Voters at a July 13 forum that the city should look into charging homeowners for residential trash collections, according to Crain’s New York Business.

“We absolutely should be charging people for trash. It is a utility. It should be treated like water or electricity,” Crain’s quoted Reynoso as saying.

In an interview with Crain’s following the forum, Reynoso suggested that the city could allow each household a standard allowance for trash and charge the homeowner a fee for any garbage above the allotted amount. Such a program would get more New Yorkers to recycle their trash, he told Crain’s.

Reynoso is a member of a special task force put together by the Department of Sanitation in 2015 to investigate ways to get New Yorkers to adhere to the city’s trash recycling laws.

But the fee-for-trash proposal is coming under sharp criticism from Republicans.

John Quaglione, a Republican who is running for the City Council seat representing Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and parts of Bensonhurst, says he does not support the plan.

“The City Council is really losing it. Councilmember Reynoso is trying to charge you for picking up your trash. I don’t think so,” Quaglione wrote in a fundraising letter to supporters.

“The already overtaxed, overburdened and overcharged law-abiding citizens of Brooklyn should not have to pay more to have their garbage picked up. This is not right and not fair. These are the basic rights of taxpaying citizens, and they shouldn’t be shrugged off,” Quaglione wrote.

Another Bay Ridge candidate, Liam McCabe, who is running against Quaglione in the GOP primary, also trashed the proposal.

“If city government is about anything, it’s about providing the most basic services like picking up the trash. It is unconscionable to think that the city wants to charge working class people to perform the most basic service of government. The mayor and the City Council are promoting policies that are pushing people out of the homes and neighborhoods they built,” McCabe said in a statement.