Tuftonboro “Island Day” (junk removal at Pier 19)
 

For all Tuftonboro island residents that utilize “Island Day” at Pier 19–where island residents can dispose of (with payment of appropriate fees) construction debris, appliances, etc., at the pier from their boat—I encourage you to contact the town selectmen. At a recent meeting, the board of selectmen agreed with the transfer station supervisor to change Island Day in 2020 from a Saturday, as it always has been, to midweek (middle part of second page of the meeting minutes: https://www.tuftonboro.org/sites/tuf...th_updates.pdf).

For those of us island residents that work full time and are only on the islands on weekends, this will effectively preclude its use unless we take a vacation day from work. As island residents who receive very little in services from the town (no schools, roads, snow plowing, etc), this is a meaningful service that many island residents utilize. Island residents that work should not be required to take a vacation day to utilize this service. There is a particular insult with this to Tuftonboro island residents this year in light of the fact that Tuftonboro island properties were just reassessed with a huge increase of 40-50%, as compared to a much smaller percentage increase (15% range) for mainland waterfront.

This change appears to be due to a few bad apples (likely including both mainland and island residents) that disposed of junk at the dumpster overnight without paying appropriate fees, or by disposing of hazardous materials that were not accepted (paint, etc.). The town can certainly find a better solution than effectively eliminating Island Day for most islanders. So if you are in a similar position as we are and rely on Island Day every year, please contact the board of selectmen at selectmen@tuftonboro.org, or 603-569-4539 ext 10.

At the risk of stating the obvious, stating your views on this forum will likely not make any impact. You need to contact the board of selectmen directly.

Thank you for this information and helpful post. Every Tuftonboro island property owner should send the selectmen a message telling them that "we're mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore". This is complete BS, and a total kick in the private parts. This, coupled with their outrageous, unrealistic reassessment of island properties (as compared with mainland waterfront properties) is reason to bombard the Town with protests.

Time to get the message across, folks. :fire:

This is sadly similar to Tuftonboro's response to misuse of the Put and Take service at the Transfer Station. Instead of fixing a great program's flaws, they killed the program--until it was revived by a great group of volunteers

The reason Clay the Transfer Manager has recommended to the Selectmen to change the date to a week day is simply because the company they use Waste Management does not work on weekends. Nor does Cassella's. So the dumpster is dropped on a Friday night and scavengers from the town and island people dump their junk Friday night. Neighbors saw trucks cars and boaters drive up to the dumpster and dumped their crap Friday night.
Easy solution...find a waste company that works on Saturday. Why not have volunteers bring their trucks over to help out on Saturday. The road Agent Jim Bean bring town trucks to do the same. Post signs that not dumping allowed or there will be fines for those who do dump out side the posted hours. Have a trail camera on the dumpster. Oh why not have a Tuftonboro Police Cruiser stand by or cruise by once in a while. The solution is simple with a little effort of thought it can easily remain on Saturday. Others I'm sure have other ideas that can come up with simple solutions. Bring your ideas on...!

WM & Cassella “not working” on weekends is most likely BS. It is probably an overtime issue. The company I worked with used both and never had an issue with can delivery on weekends. Just had to poney up the$.


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How about the town having WM drop the containers at the Firehouse on Friday, using a cartage co that can provide service on weekends to move them to the pier Saturday morning and return them to Firehouse at the end of the day. WM can pick them up on Monday.


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Update on island large trash day
 

The selectmen discussed this briefly yesterday at their regular meeting, watch at the link below. They want us, the public to come up with a solution.
Makes no sense to me.

You can view the meeting video at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eflUE5WGL-c. They do mention the Islanders’ email at the 1 hour 5 minute mark. Ultimately they agreed that Island Day will remain a weekday until an alternate solution is proposed by the public, such as was done with the Swap Shop.

Why does the town have elected officials and a transfer station manager if they cannot figure this out?