Starting next month, Hopkinton residents will no longer have to worry about bagging their waste in green trash bags as part of the pay-by-bag program when disposing of their trash at the transfer station.

At Thursday’s annual town meeting, voters chose to scrap the program, which many residents viewed as a nuisance that forced them to shell out extra money and endure frustrations like having to double-bag trash to prevent leaks.

William Palizzolo said he supports the select board’s unanimous decision to eliminate the pay-by-bag program, which charged residents $1.25 for 33-gallon bags and 75 cents for 13-gallon bags.

As part of the program, Hopkinton residents had to use green trash bags to dispose of their waste at the transfer station. Starting April 1, they will no longer need to.

“Our property taxes are a huge burden in this town, but it adds an insult to injury when, on top of the high taxes, we cannot use the transfer station, which our taxes pay for without an arbitrary fee attached,” said Palizzolo.

The system adopted at the 2010 town meeting never quite worked as intended, partly because Hopkinton shares its transfer station with Webster, which doesn’t use green bags.

Only about 11% of residents actually used the bags to dispose of waste at the town’s transfer station.

To ensure the program’s success, Select Board member Thomas Lipoma said it needed strict enforcement at the transfer station, but that came with its own set of challenges.

“Talking with some of the transfer station attendants and some of the people involved at the very beginning it was clear there was a lot of animosity at the actual transfer station – residents refusing to use the bags, residents having arguments with the transfer station employees,” said Lipoma.

During times when select board members or resident volunteers tried to enforce the program at the dump, they found that people from neighboring towns and cities, like Concord, were bringing their trash to the dump in Hopkinton.

Concord also has a pay-by-bag program requiring residents to use purple bags, leaving many residents disgruntled.

Some Hopkinton residents wanted to give the bags another chance, supporting the pay-by-bag concept, which has been shown to reduce waste generation in other towns.

Meredith Hatfield said if the town implemented it correctly, it could work.

“We have amazingly smart people in this town like we have to be able to figure this out,” said Hatfield. “Landfills are one of the biggest sources of PFAs (forever chemicals) in the state. So what we can do is put less trash in landfills and stop poisoning our water and our soil.”

It took four hours into the meeting before voters finally got to the town’s $10 million operating budget.

Salaries and rising health insurance costs were the main drivers of the budget.

Voters approved the budget which will raise the tax rate to $4.87 per $1,000 of assessed property value, an increase of 13 cents.

Bonds for addressing the PFAS-contaminated lagoons at the transfer station, sludge removal and wastewater infrastructure were approved by voters through a ballot vote.

However, a petitioned warrant article to shift from the traditional town meeting format to SB2 didn’t pass. With 364 votes against it and 173 in favor, it fell short of the ⅗ majority needed to pass.

All other warrant articles passed, except for a petitioned article that sought to restore the authority to taxpayers, allowing them to accept new streets that could become part of land subdivided for development.

Richard McIntire said he wanted to return the authority to the voters to approve new streets.

“This article would return to the voters a direct opportunity to weigh in on some of the issues of rapid development the cost associated with it and unforeseen complications including discussions on environmental impact,” said McIntire.

However, the attempt to revoke the authority given to the select board in 1994 was defeated with a voice vote.

Louise Carr, opposing the proposal, argued that it reflected a “not in my backyard” mentality.

“This is not in the benefit of the whole town of Hopkinton,” said Carr. “We need to expand our tax base. We need to allow some development.”

Sruthi Gopalakrishnan can be reached at sgopalakrishnan@cmonitor.com