Waste Management’s district manager, Michael D. Mahar, offers some interesting arguments in his Oct. 26 Another Voice, but the numbers he cites do not bear scrutiny. Mahar enumerates payments made by Waste Management in three categories: wages, salary and benefits paid to Niagara County residents; payments to subcontractors and suppliers; and school taxes—$5 million, $22 million and $750,000 respectively.

He goes on to list what those payments will grow to if Waste Management is allowed to expand—$300 million, $250 million and $75 million, again respectively. That’s a whopping 1,000 percent increase in taxes paid, an extraordinary 1,137 percent increase in payments to vendors and an astounding 6,000 percent increase in wages and benefits.

I’m sorry but increases of that magnitude are just not believable. Unless, that is, Mahar is comparing current annual payments to cumulative projections over a number of years: 10 or 20 or perhaps 100 years. He doesn’t specify. If that is the case, Mahar is, in economic terms, comparing apples to oranges. It’s a dishonest argument and casts doubts on the remainder of his contentions.

Jack Dumpert

Kenmore