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Two days after rejection, Syracuse lawmakers approve OCRRA contract

Onondaga County Comptroller
The trash incinerator run by OCRRA in Jamesville.

The Syracuse city council has approved a 20-year contract for garbage disposal, just two days after it voted the deal down.

Common councilors voted down the contract for sending city waste to the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency’s trash incinerator Monday. But at a special session Wednesday, they voted for the plan, with some councilors realizing they didn’t have a choice.

State law requires Syracuse to send its garbage to OCRRA. But with a 25-year contract expiring, councilors like Jean Kessner scoffed at the idea of locking in another two decades of burning trash.

"Our hands are tied and now for 45 years this very community that I dearly love and has a lot of bright and wonderful and green people are stuck," Kessner said. "No way out."

The city should look for cleaner methods of waste disposal, Kessner said, who raised the idea of renewing the contract every five years.

Councilor Khalid Bey was one of two in the body that switched votes.

"To not do the agreement on the part of the city, if we have to do it anyway, what sense does the contact make? Why do the contact if we have to give it to them anyway?" he said.

OCRRA’s attorney, William Bulsiecwicz says the lengthy contract allows the public benefit corporation to get the best possible bond rating and cheapest disposal rates for the city.

"We’re talking about millions of dollars; we’re not about $10,000 and $20,000," he said. "We’re talking about over a 20-year period, costing the community millions of dollars if this resolution hadn’t been approved."

About a fifth of the trash OCRRA burns comes from the city. Syracuse spends about a million dollars a month to dispose of the garbage. OCRRA penned a new deal with the operator of the trash incinerator in Jamesville in November. That contract calls for an increase in the amount of waste brought to the facility.