CONCORD, NH — The Concord City Council directed the city manager Monday to temporarily suspend city's "pay-as-you-throw" purple bag fee trash program. Beginning April 20, any trash bag will be accepted during curbside pickup in the capital city. The suspension will last until a week after Gov. Chris Sununu lifts the state's emergency order, tentatively scheduled for May 4.

The vote by the council was 14-1, with Ward 4 Councilor Meredith Hatfield voting No. The request was raised at the end of Monday's meeting by Concord Mayor Jim Bouley who said he had been hearing from some residents concerned about not being able to afford the bags during the economic collapse in the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak. Other residents have raised concerns about not wanting to venture out to stores just to get the bags and trash being left out in the city's streets and rejected recycle bins, marked with contamination stickers, due to trash put in bins, too.

Bouley said City Manager Tom Aspell was working on a program to have pay-as-you-throw trash bags mailed to people, too. Residents could also order their groceries online, he added. "There are options," Bouley said. "But I truly appreciate, and I don't take lightly, the concerns that people have over their health and coming out."

Bouley suggested suspending the program through the end of the emergency order. As part of the suspension plan, the mayor said, officials "really, really need to push recycling" in order to offset the cost of not having the fee from the bags and increased trash tonnage. "We have to be honest with ourselves," Bouley said. "There's going to be a cost to this."

The added costs were not just lost revenue — an audit of the cost of suspending the bags is between $100,000 and $166,000, if the program was suspended through the end of the fiscal year which is the end of June. It could be people taking the opportunity to throw more things away than residents have in the past, he said.

"That's real money," Bouley said. "But I think, given the times, and the crisis we are in, it might be appropriate to do that."

The suspension order would end one week after the statewide emergency order is lifted, giving residents a week to go out and buy more bags. Rob Werner, a councilor from Ward 5, said he and others believed that the May 4 order was going to be extended and councilors would need more analysis about the cost. Bouley clarified that the $166,000 was the "worst case scenario," through the end of the fiscal year. Werner later said he would support it calling the crisis "an extraordinary circumstance."