Trustees said residential trash collection in Marlboro Township will end Tuesday, Feb. 28.

“We’re sending out a newsletter first of next week to let people know,” said Trustee Hal Clase.

Clase said the trustees are advising residents that they will need to find and pay for a collection service on their own.

“I got several calls from people asking what they can do,” Clase said. “Legally we can’t recommend a trash company. People will need to contact a trash company on their own.”

Residents also don’t have the option of burning their trash because Marlboro is a no-burn township.

Clase did say that Republic Services, the township’s current trash service provider, was going to send out a letter to residents about trash pick-up on an individual basis.

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

Trustees said the service cost the township approximately $19,620 annually.

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

Hoping to bolster the budget and keep the service, trustees placed a 2.5-mil, 3-year levy on the November ballot that failed in a recount on Dec. 2.

Ruth Ann Wilson, long time resident, told trustees during the Jan. 9 meeting that the levy failed because it taxed land values. “There are 103 households out here,” she said. “Go after the people, not the fields because people make trash, not the fields.”

Trustees said there’s still a chance the township could place another levy to pay for trash pick-up on the November 2017 ballot.

Trustees also looked at other cost cutting measures including the possibility of saving $3,000 annually by not mowing the township’s two cemeteries. The trustees have contracted for that service. One option would be for trustees to mow it.

The discussion was tabled, but Clase said the mowing of the cemeteries will be revisited and decided upon at the Feb. 13 trustee meeting.

Attempts to reach Republic Services for comment failed.