CAPE ELIZABETH – Cape Elizabeth’s pay-per-bag trash proposal is about to be buried.

After months of discussion, the Town Council is expected to reject the idea at its meeting on Monday.

Also at its meeting Monday, the council is expected to vote on a resolution requesting that Central Maine Power refrain from installing its new so-called “smart meters” in Cape Elizabeth for 90 days so that the safety of the devices could be discussed. Scarborough recently passed a similar resolution.

But while the debate over the smart meters is just beginning, it seems the pay-per-bag discussion is over for now.

“We’ve had a series of opportunities for the council to work on this, discuss this and have public input on this,” said Town Council Chairman Anne-Swift Kayatta, at the beginning of a council workshop this week. “No one seems to be championing an effort to support a pay-per-bag approach,” she said.

Town Councilor David Sherman said pay-per-bag is an idea the council should revisit later on. Pay-per-bag would have charged residents per bag of trash they throw out at the transfer station, instead of the current system, in which property taxes pay for waste removal. The hope with pay-per-bag is to increase recycling and reduce trash thrown in the waste stream. The idea has been endorsed by the town’s Recycling Committee.

“I personally think pay-per-bag can work, but I don’t think the public is ready, certainly based on the feedback we have received,” Sherman said.

Councilor Jim Walsh stressed that despite the lack of support from citizens regarding pay-per-bag, the reason the council was studying the idea was because the council had determined early in the year that its highest priority was to seek revenue streams outside of property tax.

“This was one of the opportunities we saw for potential revenue generation and savings,” he said at the Monday workshop.

Swift-Kayatta said the cost of trash disposal is “one of the single biggest items” in the budget, outside of the costs to the town to operate its three schools. Last year, the town spent $769,280 in waste removal.

Sherman said part of the lack of support for the pay-per-bag was due to the fact that the expected savings would have been less than originally expected.

“When you crunch the numbers,” he said, “the decrease in cost to the town is $20,000 if we institute pay-per-bag, but that’s only if things line up just right and our assumptions are just right.”

Despite not moving forward with pay-per-bag, Councilor Frank Governali said it was “an excellent exercise in getting public input.”

“It is a good model to use for the work we do on issues that deal with the public,” he said.

Town Manager Mike McGovern said even without the pay-per-bag approach, Cape Elizabeth residents have been doing a better job in their recycling.

In fiscal year 2005-2006, he pointed out, town residents threw away 3,723 tons of trash. In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, residents threw away 2,579 tons of trash. The amount of materials recycled has increased in that time, going from 696 tons in 2005-2006 to 1,159 tons in 2009-2010. In September 2010, residents recycled 34 percent of their waste, the highest percentage since the beginning of 2010.

There is still work to be done to keep increasing Cape Elizabeth’s recycling numbers. While the overall community is recycling 34 percent of its waste, the school department is recycling roughly 27 percent of its waste, a figure, McGovern said, that should be much higher.

The Town Council is also expected to vote next week to pass a resolution urging Central Maine Power not to install advanced metering infrastructure, or smart meters, at Cape Elizabeth residences for at least 90 days. The council also urged the Maine Public Utilities Commission to provide a forum for citizens to voice their thoughts either in favor of, or against the installation of such meters. The Scarborough Town Council passed a similar resolution at its Oct. 20 meeting.

Part of the concern about the meters involves the radio radiation frequency. CMP indicates the level of radiation from the devices is not a health concern. Maine Public Health Director Dora Anne Mills has concurred, saying frequency from the devices is similar to a wireless router for a personal computer. Converting to smart meters is expected to save CMP money and help people better manage their electricity use. According to CMP, the equipment in the smart meters is certified by the Federal Communications Commission as meeting safety standards.

Nevertheless, Ange Foley, of Beverley Terrace, told the Town Council that she was concerned about the devices interfering with baby monitors, cell phone reception, hearing aids and life-support equipment, such as pain medication dispensers.