AGENCY DENIES RECYCLING GRANT TO DEXTER

It's back to the drawing board in the city's effort to entice residents to increase their participation in the voluntary recycling program after a regional agency denied Dexter's application for a grant to fund a curbside collection trailer.

Alderman M.A. Hart, chairman of the city's Recycling Committee, Tuesday night reported that the Bootheel Solid Waste District recently rejected the city's application for funds to purchase a trailer that would have been used for curbside collection -- an extension of the voluntary recycling program and a way city officials had hoped to avoid a sharp increase in residents' monthly trash collection fee.

Hart said the waste management district had about $150,000 to disperse to local communities this year and the requests for funding totaled more than $192,000. Dexter's application did not make the cut, he said. "We'll have to try something different," Hart said.

City officials were hoping a curbside recycling program would encourage more residents to participate in recycling in an effort to head off an increase in the trash collection fee. An increase was made more likely when the city was slapped with a 30-percent hike in the cost it pays to dump trash at Lemons Landfill.

"We've got a rate increase coming, folks, if we don't recycle a little more," Hart said.