The Town of Cobleskill hopes to make as much as $5,000 by logging a land-locked portion of the old landfill.
Sharon Springs logger Doug Handy is working on private property adjacent to the former landfill and Supervisor Tom Murray said Monday that's really the only way to get to the 40-50 trees left standing when the Greenbush Road site was logged in 2011.
Mr. Murray said most of the trees are ash-which should be cut before the emerald ash borer arrives and destroys them; there are also some oak and maple, he said.
"To make it worthwhile, they should really both be logged at the same time," Mr. Murray said.
Estimated value of the timber is $3,000-$5,000.
Councilmen backed the idea, but wanted to make sure they weren't creating a repeat of '11's controversy, when local loggers packed a January meeting to complain the contract for eight acres at the old landfill should have been bid out-not awarded to one logger.
Town Attorney Mike West said at that time that the town legally did not have to bid out the work; then-councilman Ken Hotopp, a professional logging consultant who donated his time said he believed the contract would make the town more money than putting that job out to bid.
"I don't have a problem with it," Councilman Sherwood Veith said Monday of Mr. Murray's proposal, "but we're not going to have a whole bunch of loggers come in mad at us for doing it this way, are we?"
Mr. Murray said no.
Councilmen agreed to let Mr. Murray sign the contract with Mr. Handy.