Several years ago, a few citizens in the town of Woolwich first began talking about a pay-as-you-throw system for getting rid of non-recyclable waste, of residents paying for their own trash bags in hopes they would throw away less in the landfill and recycle more. This has worked in many towns in Maine. The nearest to Woolwich is Bath where, in seven years, they have cut the amount of material going in to the landfill in half, and doubled the amount of recycling.

Two years ago, as a result of a citizen petition, voters at Woolwich town meeting agreed to have the town’s Solid Waste and Recycling Committee study pay-as-you-throw for Woolwich and present a recommendation to voters at this year’s town meeting. This they did.

There were public hearings, materials in town newsletters and on websites, a lot of discussion amongst neighbors, and, finally, a vote at town meeting to adopt PAYT for Woolwich, and to contract with WasteZero to administer it.

If you were there, or read the newspapers, you know that discussion was lively, passionate and lengthy. In the end, the vote was 114-105 to start a PAYT program in Woolwich. It was a close vote — as with many heated issues, there was first a voice vote, which was followed by a call for a show of hands, and then, before that could be tallied, a call for a written ballot.

It was a close vote, and it was hard-fought, but in the end, voters reached a decision. And we feel we must respect that. Town meeting is the legislative authority in this town and has been for over 250 years. The Woolwich Board of Selectmen, by a vote of 4-1, recently rejected a petition to put a vote on PAYT on the November ballot. The petitioners carefully acquired the signatures of over 200 registered voters in Woolwich to back the petition. We respect that. Doing our due diligence, we then sent the petition to the town’s attorney, who weighed in on several flaws in the actual petition.

The most compelling argument to those of us on the board who voted to reject the petition was a 1990 decision by Maine Superior Court, which ruled that referendum votes should not be used to re-vote an issue that had been legitimately and recently decided at a town meeting.

We have an obligation to honor that process and the actions of the town meeting participants. It also makes sense. Residents should not have to fear that decisions made at town meeting could be reconsidered a few months later. It undermines the decision-making authority of town meeting. And it creates a terrible precedent.

Town meeting’s “direct democracy,” also called the “purest form of democracy,” has been praised by people like Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville, and its authority should be taken very seriously.

The appropriate time to revisit this issue is at next May’s town meeting (when we’ll also have data about the PAYT program in Woolwich).

Allison Hepler (207-319-4396)

Lloyd Coombs (207-443-9619)

Jason Shaw (207-319-8931)

David King, Chairman (207-751-7047)

Woolwich Selectmen