Board of supervisors’ notebook

Litter control efforts are picking up
Litter Control Committee Coordinator Laura Carter briefed county officials on ongoing recycling efforts in Orange County and shared some of her organization’s objectives for the future. In addition to recycling facilities at five locations in the county, Carter said programs and facilities for recycling in schools had been extremely successful. But there’s always more county residents can do to reduce, reuse and recycle. Soon, county government offices will feature bins so employees can jump on the recycling bandwagon. And if all goes well, Carter told supervisors, offices in the towns of Orange and Gordonsville will be outfitted with recycling bins, too.
Grant money funds the purchase of recycling materials like bins and containers-it isn’t costing the county to provide the facilities. Thanks to Carter and her committee, county folks will find it easier than ever to be environmentally friendly when they’re out and about. Soon, Orange County residents and visitors will find a place to toss their aluminum cans and plastic bottles (in good conscience) at community events like the fair, festivals and concerts. And sports fans can recycle their sports drinks containers at places like Porterfield Park.
Carter said she hopes to implement recycling for white paper and paperboard. Certainly, there’s a demand for recycling those items-the bulk of otherwise landfill-destined waste from offices and businesses. That would offer an obvious benefit to the ecology, but there’s the potential for the county to cash in; there are companies that’ll pay for white paper and paperboard.
Better still, the committee is researching the particulars of providing electronics recycling. Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe nodded his approval. While it’s not exactly illegal to dump your old Dell in the Orange County landfill, you really shouldn’t do it, Rolfe said. And, he added, it wouldn’t surprise him to see the state outlaw the practice of trashing technology devices altogether-and soon. Even more reason to have an alternative disposal plan in place. What makes it complicated is that somebody has to haul all those Toshibas away after they’ve been appropriately corralled in a recycling container, and that trucking contractor is going to charge by weight.
Carter’s still researching options, she said.

Policy static
At their last meeting, supervisors spoke about establishing a one-size-fits-all approach to supplying documents requested through the Freedom of Information Act. What they ultimately decided was that there was no way to determine a price tag because staff hours and the volume of paperwork varied widely from request to request. No change, therefore, was made to the county’s current procedure: Charges are assessed fairly and proportionately based on the amount of time required to assemble FOIA request materials.
But at May 26 meeting, District 4 Supervisor Teri Pace raised the topic again. She said she just didn’t think the county’s policy was clear enough.
“I thought that we had just agreed Bill [Rolfe] had a policy that we could explain to the people and we could keep out of it,“ District 2 Supervisor Zack Burkett said.
District 1 Supervisor Mark Johnson said the extent of the board’s role in determining charges for filling FOIA requests was to make clear to the county administrator’s office an expectation of complying with state law and exercising good, fair judgment.
“I think that we have to set the standard,“ Pace countered. “We need to draw the line of where we start charging.“
Orange County Attorney Sharon Pandak provided a number of examples supporting the continuation of the county’s current methodology of evaluating apples and oranges fairly. Establishing an unvarying charge might have the unintended consequence of providing “disincentive to do things in a more orderly manner,“ Pandak said.
For example, FOIA filers could conceivably circumvent a $.25-per-copy-after-the-first 50 fee rate by making multiple visits to the records office and requesting 49 copies each time.
And no two FOIA requests are the same: simply pushing the “Start” button on a copier-regardless of the number of copies produced-takes seconds. But locating and dissecting 10 archived, bound books to extract just one page from each could take hours.
So to be clear then, again, the official decision on charging for FOIA requests, board chairman Lee Frame said, would be that supervisors “are going to expect the county administrator to follow the law, be fair and use common sense.“

Who can do what VDOT’s not?
If there’s more trash lining the lanes and roads around here than volunteer trash-picker-uppers and highway-adopters can handle, perhaps there are people with a little time to spare who could pitch in.
Pace wondered if inmates at the Central Virginia Regional Jail with time to kill could remove roadside litter.
A humorous reminiscence of old-time rock-breaking chain gangs ensued, and board members made cracks about VDOT’s medians-turned-hayfields after budget cuts all but eliminated mowing.
“[Prisoners] probably won’t be able to see the litter because its in the tall grass!“ Frame joked.
District 3 Supervisor Teel Goodwin suggested (in jest) that a greater benefit to the county might be to outfit inmates with weed whackers rather than trash bags. 
But seriously, Frame said he’d check in at the next Central Virginia Regional Jail Board meeting to find out how reasonable it could be to set up a supervised, striped-jumpsuited clean-up crew.