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LOCAL RECYCLING
recycling | CLOSURE NOTICE
Windsor closes recycling center after analysis
BYCUYLER MEADE
The Town of Windsor Recycling Center is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Windsor
The city of Windsor is closing its recycling center after an analysis showed it was being somewhat lightly used and was costing the town more money than it was worth.
Windsor public works director Eric Lucas said the town expected to save about $120,000 annually with the move, money that it desperately needed to reallocate elsewhere as the pandemic ravaged the town’s budget.
“We’ll save, but those dollars, with COVID and not knowing the economy, we’re able to not spend that money but we’re fully expecting a decrease in revenues on other lines,” Lucas said. “So it’s not like we’re sticking it in a bank account. It’s going to offset some other areas where revenues are down.”
Lucas said the town had been looking at the recycling center critically since at least 2018, when they closed the old brush dumping site because they determined that was costing the town about $100,000 a year just to chip brush.
“We got out of the brush business and moved the recycling over to the public services campus where parks and public works are housed,” Lucas said. “Reopened in ‘19 and again started tracking usage. Resident-only, free to drop off glass and cardboard, all that. We really averaged, on the low side, about 20 cars a day, and high side about 40. A lot were repeat visitors, and, really, doing the math, it was about 4% of the households coming here to the site.”
Lucas said the town reached out to private recycling companies Waste Management and Bunting to ask about their recycling coverage via their curbside recycling services.
“They’re serving a vast majority of neighborhoods,” he said. “So we looked at dollars and cents, knowing it’s not popular — we want to do the right thing with cardboard and plastic, glass, not just landfill it. But the commodity market is basically zero. You could spend all the money you want on recycling but it doesn’t go anywhere. Nobody’s turning it into something else anymore. It used to be, but that’s gone away. All we’re doing is spending money, there’s no revenue back at all.”
Lucas acknowledged it was a shame on a larger scale to do this, but said it was just good sense.
“We want people to recycle,” he said. “Help save the Earth, help our environment, but nothing’s happening with the product. I hope maybe one day somebody will figure out a way to do it that makes sense.”
The town owns a compactor that was set to be replaced this year, and avoiding that cost is a positive for the department, too, Lucas said.
“The rest is just big trash bins and we have fencing that we’ll repurpose,” Lucas said.
Lucas said he’s seen the frustration after the announcement Tuesday from those who have appreciated the center.
“We recognize it’s an impact,” he said. “And we still want people to recycle, but to use a private service and not the town’s anymore.”
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Question & Answer with new Windsor mayor PAUL RENNEMEYER
By Bobby Fernandez
PAUL RENNEMEYER WAS ELECTED MAYOR EARLIER THIS MONTH BY THE TOWN OF WINDSOR AFTER HAVING SERVED AS A TOWN BOARD MEMBER. HE DEFEATED FELLOW BOARD MEMBER DAVID SISLOWSKI AND HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR HUNTER RIVERA. RENNEMEYER WAS SWORN IN AS THE SUCCESSOR TO OUTGOING MAYOR KRISTIE MELENDEZ MONDAY, APRIL 27. THE GREELEY TRIBUNE SPOKE WITH RENNEMEYER OVER THE PHONE TO ASK HIM A FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF WINDSOR, HIS PLANS AS MAYOR, AND WHAT DRAWS HIM TO PUBLIC SERVICE. THESE ARE HIS ANSWERS, EDITED LIGHTLY FOR SPACE.
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST PRIORITIES AS MAYOR OF WINDSOR?
First priorities are to begin my relationship with the new town board members that are just coming on.
One, Victor Tallon has been on our planning commission like 25 years, not necessarily new to Windsor or new to the intergovernmental workings, but he obviously is new to the town board starting next Monday. He’ll bring a fresh perspective. He has history on land uses of Windsor, code issues as they’ve pertained to planning commission, and he’s been pretty familiar with how Windsor’s been built out over 25 years.
The other new board member, Scott Charpentier, runs his own mortgage business in fort Collins, lives in Windsor, so my goal is to get to know them, what makes them tick.
I’ve actually already begun that process, but I think it’ll continue more when I’m official. I’ve sat down or talked over the phone with all the current board members that I’ll have on the town board, to get a grasp of what their goals are, what liaison positions they want to have, advisory boards that we all serve on, to get their feedback.
I’m very much about collaboration and seeking common ground and I know that all starts with the relationship that we all have. We won’t all agree on 100% of everything, that’s unrealistic. I really believe it has a lot to do with where we’re coming from. Our goal for Windsor is to move it forward in the same direction.
I’m optimistic about that, my conversations with the five other guys I know of right now, it’s looking very promising to collaborate and have a like minded approach to the different topics we have to encounter.
Windsor mayor-elect Paul Rennemeyer stands for a portrait outside Town Hall in Windsor
WHO ARE YOUR ROLE MODELS IN THIS POSITION? WHO DO YOU LOOK UP TO?
I have had a deep respect for anybody who’s held this position before me. Whether we have the same management approach, which we don’t, I do have a great respect for those who have endured what this position means and what it entails.
I have a close relationship with Kristie Melendez, the current mayor that will be exiting. I know I can pick her brain at any point in time. I’ve sat down with her already and she’s already a phone call away. When it comes to a history on a topic or what her point of view might be, what she might add. She’s also been on the council for 10 years, six before I got here. I have a great admiration for her and the job she’s done over 10 years.
I’ll also never forget it, four years ago the very night i was starting on the board, I was approached by the exiting mayor at that time, John Vasquez, who said, ‘Hey if I can be of any assistance to you, I see great things for you, I think you’ve got everything it takes to go far with the town,’ and he and I meet once a quarter to talk about everything under the sun, getting history and perspective on different projects.
He served as mayor for 8 years, so having the ear and ability to contact those who’ve had this position for 12 years — Windsor’s come a long way in 12 years, the tornado hadn’t hit 12 years ago. (Vasquez) started as mayor one month before that tornado hit.
Windsor’s come a long way. A lot’s gone well, and Windsor’s always very thoughtful on how processes go. Where we’ve been, what’s been spent, how fiscally frugal the town’s been run, and the mayor’s very influential in that regard. Those are my top two individuals that I have no problem bouncing ideas off of and asking their perspective, not so I’m headed necessarily in that direction, but that I would be able to glean from them any wisdom that might be possible.
WHY DO YOU FEEL DRAWN TO PUBLIC SERVICE?
Not to be cliché, but Windsor is nothing without the people, and the people put me in this position. They entrusted me to be their leader for the next four years, and I believe that, with some of the major decisions we will have in the next four years, these are generational decisions that our board is going to be faced with. Not just in how we get Windsor strong again after COVID, how we rebound from that, but projects like we’re already dealing with — for example, NISP, we expect in 6 to 9
months we’ll have a decision on that, and it’ll lead to us getting the town secured potentially in their water future for 50 plus years.
Some stuff falls onto our board that’s never fallen onto boards before us. Not that they haven’t had big decisions — every board and every mayor do — but I see that the people are what make Windsor great, and it’s the people we remember to serve at the pleasure of. I don’t take that lightly at all.
It’s a very humbling thought, and, even though you look at what percentage voted and it’s still a fraction of the total population, you look at the enormity of the whole scope of
Windsor mayor-elect Paul Rennemeyer stands for a portrait outside Town Hall in Windsor
the position and realize it’s much bigger than anything you ever thought you’d be getting into — in a good way, but a humbling sense. For that reason I’m grateful to the people of Windsor.
Me, my family, my wife and I, we’re fully committed to whatever sacrifice as far as family life, relationships, we’re willing to give it everything we have to make sure the next four years are a success.
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU SEE FACING WINDSOR RIGHT NOW?
I want to put a little twist on that. I get that question often, ‘Why are you doing this, what are the issues?’
I want to be known — and I don’t say this from a legacy perspective, I could care less what people think of me four years from now, I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for Windsor — I want our board to be known as the board that took some bold, decisive action to get some projects implemented.
I could tell you water or transportation infrastructure or affordable housing, the list of all the list of what we are going to work on. But these are things our board was talking about four years ago in strategic planning, and the fact is very little has been done to implement this grand strategy.
Granted, that involves working with CDOT, because highway 392 and 257 are our major routes, but we can’t let that stop us, we can’t let that slow us down in our approach to being able to get major infrastructure projects done in Windsor.
Windsor will require bold decisions to say, ‘Hey, we need to make a stand, get this project done.’ It may mean spending some reserves. It may be a financed project, but we have to look at this as an investment in our community. Because boards in the past have talked about this, how they could see that transportation is a major problem because of how fast we’ve grown, and we’ve talked about enlarging certain roads, making sure traffic flow is better in certain pinch points, but very little’s been accomplished in getting that done.
That is NOT a slam against our current mayor or the last two to four years plus; we just need to get serious. I don’t want to have 25 different things to accomplish; I want to have like four to five. What we work toward is checkmarking those boxes. When these projects, if not completed, are underway, are funded and are in the process of being completed by
the time I’m done in four years, that feels like success to me.
I want to be the board of implementation. I said that in my campaign. I want to be known that we got some things rolling if not completed.
WHEN YOUR TIME AS MAYOR IS OVER, WHAT ARE THE TOP THINGS YOU HOPE TO HAVE ACCOMPLISHED?
My three big focuses are water, housing and transportation. There’s lots of facets to these major three projects or initiatives.
One I haven’t talked about as much is affordable housing. The situation we have in Windsor is, due to our rapid growth and due to what the housing market allows, homebuilders are charging what seems to be a fairly abundant amount for homes, making these homes not your starter homes but making them typically what most likely would be a dualincome household to be able to afford.
That being the case, we have a big gap in our community between those that work in our community and those that can afford to live in our community. That’s a big disconnect, because the baristas at our coffee shops can’t afford to live in Windsor. The people working a lot of the hourly positions at King Soopers or Safeway can’t afford to live in our community. They may, but probably have a dual-income situation when the average price of a house is still like $425, $450 thousand.
Lending requirements the way they are, how much you have to have down, etcetera, it makes it very difficult unless you have a perfect scenario to move into Windsor. So there’s this big disconnect between those that want to live in Windsor and those that are able.
Affordable housing is something our board has talked about, but unfortunately when people think of affordable housing they don’t have a very pretty picture. We have two different forms of affordable housing in Windsor right now: We’ve got lower-income government subsidized by our Windsor housing authority, and we’ve got workforce housing, for which the rent is still decent but the amount of the rent is based upon income. And then the other form of housing that we’re championing right now is senior affordable housing, because a big segment of our population, baby boomers, are averaging into their 70s, 65 to 75 right now.
That’s the demographic I work with in my job, so I know it very well. The majority of seniors are social security check-to-check.
Windsor mayor-elect Paul Rennemeyer stands for a portrait outside Town Hall in Windsor
Unfortunately the average social security check is not enough to live on. Even in my own family, when my grandfather, my grandmother, when her check went away she got just his, she still couldn’t afford to pay the bills between taxes and utilities and food, even though he wasn’t around any more and she didn’t have his directly related expenses, she still was a few hundred dollars short to be able to live on her own.
That’s not everybody’s scenario, but I personally deal every day of the week with seniors that are barely able to get by from month to month. We have a large wave of seniors between 65 and 75 right now who are coming into that senior population where we don’t have enough housing to provide at affordable rates — based upon monthly income, which may be social security only. And it needs to be respectable living conditions, too, where people aren’t thinking, ‘Boy that’s run down, but that’s a respectable housing situation for each of them.’
The project currently underway within the town is on North 15th Street north of King Soopers. There’s a workforce housing development that’s been there three to four years, but just north of there there’s I believe just over 100 units to be there of affordable senior apartment housing, and the neighbors right there completely welcomes them.
It’s welcoming because everybody knows a senior in their life that has struggled with the ability to live a respectable retirement because of their limited income. It’s unfortunate that our seniors are left in that position, but the town is trying to partner, and has been to the best of our ability, with the Windsor Housing Authority to be able to waive permit fees and the like, where we can make it affordable for the Windsor Housing Authority to go get federal grant money and low interest rate loans all on their own.
My biggest heart is for seniors. My heart is behind that — for 18 years that’s been the population that I’ve always worked with. I can tell you first-hand that there’s a lot of need. That’s a role that everybody, all age demographics should be welcome within your community.
And we want to make it, the way we’ve partnered, if we’re helping them get established, we want Windsor residents have first priority to get in. So instead of them having to find another community where they spend their tax dollars in other communities, they’ll be able to stay in Windsor. It’ll be better for Windsor, plus they’re staying in the community where they’ve lived in possibly their whole life.
It’s a segment that needs to be looked after, and I know that a large segment of that population put me in this position.
