Buxton voters, at its annual town meeting Saturday, June 14, will weigh in on whether to keep or scrap a $1.2 million proposal to join the waste giant ecomaine in Portland to handle its trash disposal. Reportedly a contentious topic in town for weeks, trash disposal is expected to pack the meeting.

Before deciding the matter, voters will hear details about the proposal in a public airing during the town meeting.

“We need some place to dump our trash,” Buxton Town Treasurer William Hall said at his Town Hall office last week.

The disposal decision comes after a coalition of several towns — banded together in 1986 as Tri-County Solid Waste Group to dispose of their trash — dissolves at the end of June, Hall said.

The town can link up with ecomaine by investing $1.2 million for 30 years, he said.

“Buxton would become an owner-member with a seat on the ecomaine board,” Lucy Sullivan, ecomaine communications director, said in an email to Westbrook-Gorham Now on June 9.

The 20 owner-member ecomaine communities includes Buxton neighbors Gorham, Hollis, Limington and Scarborough.

The town meeting is set for 9 a.m. on Saturday, June 14, at the municipal building at 185 Portland Road.

The matter is Article 36 in the town meeting warrant and voter approval would authorize the Select Board to ink an agreement. If in-person voters OK a deal, the town’s trash could be trucked to ecomaine beginning July 1. Because ecomaine doesn’t truck waste, however, Casella, under contract with Buxton for the next two years, would continue to serve as Buxton’s hauler that serves the town’s curbside waste pickup program.

The town could be prodded to implement curbside recycling in two years, but the matter at hand now is not about recycling. “We have to do something with trash,” Hall said.

Hall said there are misunderstandings swirling through town about the proposal shutting down Buxton’s transfer station or trimming its hours. “It’s been blown way out of proportion,” Hall said.

“We are not shutting down the transfer station,” said Select Board member Chad Poitras on June 9.

The ecomaine curbside recycling program includes accepting paper, magazines, pizza boxes, tin cans, glass bottles and milk jugs.

Buxton’s transfer station, adjacent to Town Hall, handles those items and much more, including lawnmowers, refrigerators, used liquid petroleum products, furniture, along with composting of organic materials like leaves and brush. The transfer station also operates a Share Shop for unwanted clothes, toys and books that are available for reuse.

“The building is pretty much for recycling,” Hall said.