MEDINA — Commissioners passed a resolu­tion Monday that sets up a $1 per-student grant for local schools. To receive the money, districts have to implement a new recycling education program and stop using private recyclers.

But before they voted 2-to-1 to approve the esti­mated $28,000 grant, commissioners put in their final words on the issue, which has become divi­sive among the board members.

The county solid waste district is seeking the removal of Abitibi Bowater Paper Retriever bins like these. (GAZETTE FILE PHOTO)

Commissioner Steve Hambley responded to Commissioner Pat Geissman’s letter in Saturday’s Gazette in which she said the grant was the county’s attempt at “paying off schools” to enforce the county’s solid waste policy.

Hambley said the grant is meant primarily for “educating the students as well as the public about our unique recycling program in Medina County.”

County officials and staff at the Educational Service Center are working to create a new recy­cling curriculum that informs students about the county’s Central Processing Facility in Westfield Township. Hambley said the grant will help the schools implement the program, and he didn’t want to give the schools “an unfunded mandate.”

Half of the grant will be picked up by Envision, the private contractor that operates the process­ing facility. The rest of the grants will be paid with revenues from the sale of recyclables at the pro­cessing facility.

However, Geissman said Monday the grant is not needed.

“As I have said all along, there is no need to pay the schools for an educational program. They have not asked for any funds. They would do this without any funds,” she said, noting that the schools don’t have to use all the money on educa­tion. “So to call it a payment for education is just a way to pay them off in another way to get them to stop using private recyclers.”

Commissioner Sharon Ray said that isn’t true.

“This is an education program.… You can have a disagreement of opinion, but you cannot rewrite the facts,” Ray said.

Officials with the Medina County Solid Waste District first proposed the grant this summer in response to Abitibi Bowater’s paper recycling program that has grown in Med­ina County over the last six years. Abitibi provides nonprofits with its green Paper Retriever bins to collect newspaper and other paper products. The company pays the nonprofits in exchange for their participa­tion in the program. Last year, Abitibi paid about $30,000 to hosts in Medina County, which include public and private schools, churches and other nonprofits.

The Solid Waste District contends the Abitibi program breaks its rules. Paper and other recyclables already are removed from trash at the pro­cessing facility. When the facility was built in 1993, the Solid Waste Dis­trict instituted a policy of flow control, which means all the trash and recyclables that orig­inate in the county must be sent to the facility. That way, the Solid Waste District and Envision are paid for the cost of processing recyclables and for selling them to be recycled. According to projections from the Solid Waste District, the county lost about $127,000 last year and Envision lost about $178,000 from paper collected by Abitibi that was not processed by the facility.

All the public schools in the county that hosted the bins have removed them since the grant was first proposed. Ham­bley said the grant makes up for the revenue they would have received for hosting the bins, in addition to providing money for recycling educa­tion. He said the schools will be able to use the funds remaining after the education program at their discretion.

He also said the grant pro­gram and agreement with the schools prevents any court action because schools con­sent not to work with any pri­vate recyclers.

“I can guarantee that the cost of a civil suit against our schools, against nonprofits or against an international firm on this issue will far outstrip $15,000,” he said.

Geissman said the grant will not make much of a difference, because there are still about 65 bins at private schools and churches throughout the county. She said she’s received phone calls from residents who said they will take their paper to those bins now that the ones at schools have been closed.

County Sanitary Engineer Jim Troike said he will soon dis­cuss with the commissioners what to do about the remain­ing 65 nonprofits, such as pri­vate schools and churches, that host Abitibi bins.

Hambley said he would not support a grant given to the remaining nonprofits that host bins.

Troike said the grant to the schools is expected to be paid in January.

Contact Maria Kacik Kula at (330) 721-4049 or mkacik@medina-gazette.com.

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