To the editor:

Re: Curbside editorial (The Record, Dec. 29). I wouldn’t have called Angie Homola an environmentalist.

Issues:

(1) The presentation made to the commissioners was so lacking in hard numbers it wouldn’t have secured a high-interest loan at a used car lot.

(2) How many route miles/gallons of fuel burned to collect how many tons of material? A real environmentalist would have learned the answer to that question before making the proposal.

(3) Do the people who will be affected by the proposal want it? Since the proposers do not know how many customers Island Disposal has (they guessed), I’m sure most of those same customers do not know that “service level ordinance” means “we just passed a law that forces you to pay for a service you may not want in order to keep one you do want.”

The response we are hearing (60 to 90 customers per day at Freeland alone) is just plain outrage that this thing was rammed through using someone who clearly did not represent the majority of her district and that no realistic attempt was made to bring the subscribers into the discussion. The real beauty of this deal is that the law does not require anyone to notify these customers until 45 days before they get their first bill (and a cart two to three times the size of their garbage can), which will be $10 to $11 a month after Island Disposal has started spending time and money in earnest.

I call this taxation without representation and urge one and all to make all the racket they can about this! Will the commissioners please tell us how many contacts they received on this topic, and the ratio for/against, both before and after their vote?

(4) Your header for the editorial may mean more than you meant it to — the gossip vine/jungle drums keep repeating the word “lawsuit” and it hasn’t been me using that word.

David Campbell

Island Recycling