Marlboro Township Trustee Hal Clase reports after making final budget cuts, “it put us back in the black.”

Trustees discontinued the township’s residential trash collection Feb. 28. The service cost the township approximately $19,620 annually.

“Driving the roads, it looks like the township went with the company we used or someone else,” said Clase. “It seems pretty calm; there haven’t been any questions from anybody about it.”

Discontinuing trash collection did bring the township close to being in budget, but further cuts were needed to get back into the black. There are 281 residents in Marlboro Township, according to the 2010 US Census.

Clase said the township no longer pays for internet and phone service. “It gave us a savings of $1,700 per year,” he said. “People can reach us on our cell phones.”

In other measures, trustees looked at the possibility of saving $3,000 annually by not mowing the township’s two cemeteries and the township’s hall lawn.

Clase said trustees decided to cut the mowing contract in half, with the lawns mowed every other week instead of weekly.

“If the grass gets a little high, that’s fine,” he said.

The decision was made in a regular trustee meeting Jan. 9 to discontinue trash service in an effort to pull the township’s budget out of the red and back into the black.

Trustees said the service had been free to residents because it was budgeted into and paid out of the general fund. Due to cuts in state funding, the township no longer receive the amount of funding it once did to maintain the service.

The vote for the township to discontinue paying for trash pick up was unanimous among the trustees.

Before making the decision to discontinue the service, trustees had placed a 2.5-mil, 3-year levy on the November ballot in an effort to keep the trash collection service.

The Delaware County Board of Elections had to conduct a recount on Dec. 2 of 164 ballots for the levy, which again ended in a tie of 82-82. Levies which end in a tie are considered a defeat under Ohio law.

“It all seems to have smoothed out,” Clase said.