The Ayer Select Board held its public hearing Tuesday night to set transfer station (solid waste) rates for the 2026 calendar year. The board raised annual vehicle sticker prices for most users, but left the price of the blue bags alone. This means the cost of disposing your trash should be similar to last year.
On the Rate Review Committee’s recommendation, the Select Board voted to:
- Raise the vehicle sticker price by $5, up to $110.
- Raise the second vehicle sticker price by $10, up to $40.
Other rates will remain the same:
- No increases for senior citizens age 65 and older; they will still pay $60 for the annual vehicle sticker.
- The cost of the blue bags will stay the same as we mentioned above.
- No changes were made to the bulk item rates.
- There was no mention of the hours changing.
$460 Per Year
The town estimates residents will pay about $460 for trash removal in 2026 if they purchase a regular vehicle sticker for $110 and use 70 medium blue bags. Hiring a private trash vendor would cost approximately $648, according to town estimates.
As for operating hours, the transfer station is open on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 7 am to 3 pm. The transfer station offers trash removal, zero-sort recycling and a swap shed, along with other services, but you need to purchase an annual vehicle sticker or day pass to use these services.
Transfer Station Operating Budget
The transfer station has a $573,000 operating budget for next year, according to the meeting materials. The Town of Ayer subsidizes the transfer station from the General Fund each year at Town Meeting to help lower the costs.
With a $250,000 appropriation from Town Meeting and about $28,600 in revenue, the town has to fund about $294,000 through rates on vehicle stickers and blue bags (we rounded the numbers for ease of reading so they may not add up exactly).
The $28,600 in revenue comes mostly from the solar panels on the back of the property. Guess how many stickers the town sells? Last year, the town sold 1,302.
Transfer Station Infrastructure Nearly 40 Years Old
We went back through old newspaper archives and learned it was June 1989 when the town held an Open House for its new $1 million transfer station on Groton Harvard Road (Source: The Public Spirit, June 13, 1989).
After decades of using a landfill, the vision was residents would drive up and lift their trash bags through the windows of the building on front of the property. The town’s vendor would pick up and dispose trash off-site. This is same approach in place today.
There was urgency around this project. The town’s landfill was nearing capacity. Residents went to Town Meeting at least twice to consider a solution, according to The Public Spirit, Feb. 18, 1987.
In 1985, Town Meeting appropriated $285,000 for the transfer station project.
Then, in February 1987, Town Meeting voted “to borrow $620,000 to pay for a new solid waste construction transfer station to be situated at the filled-to-capacity sanitary landfill on Groton Harvard Road.”
A small group of residents gathered at Town Meeting and were told if no progress was made, the landfill could potentially be shut down by the state and the town could end up having to pay a vendor higher trash removal costs.
In the end, 40 residents voted in favor of the borrowing. Nine residents voted against. The measure passed. The town took out a loan from a federal program to finance the project, according to the 1989 coverage.