New London — Fallout over a recent decision to shutter the city’s transfer station to commercial traffic spilled over into a sometimes-tense City Council meeting where members vowed to explore options aimed at mitigating inconveniences to long-time customers.

Monday’s meeting was the first since the city took the step of closing the Lewis Street facility to any users except residents.

The change, enacted just hours before the council met, was aimed at immediately addressing potentially hazardous piles of brush that frequently built-up near the underside of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, as well as bringing the station into compliance with a 50-year-old land lease set to expire in 2026.

Mayor Michael Passero explained the city is in a “unique” position with a transfer station situated on land whose air rights are owned by the state Department of Transportation.

“In order to operate, we need permission from state DOT,” he said. “They’ve been alternately nervous about our operation, especially the brush.”

Passero noted that if a recent oil truck crash and subsequent fuel oil spill happened over the station with its previous “mountain of brush,” it might have turned into a much “bigger conflagration.”

“We have been accumulating brush at an absolutely remarkable rate that we can’t control,” he said. “We seem to be the go-to place for all commercial landscape operations and we can’t sustain the cost or liability any longer.

Passero floated the idea of offering more frequent curbside brush pick-up services as a way to blunt the inconvenience to residents.

Councilor John Satti, who also owns a lawn care business, briefly fenced with Mayor Michael Passero on the transfer station issue.

Satti said “on any given day” he was likely to haul a truckload of brush to the station for his customers at a cost of $5. He said the price for ferrying a similar load 12 miles away to Montville was $75 on Monday.

“I have about 100 customers that will not be happy whatsoever,” Satti said.

Passero said residents would still be allowed to load their own vehicles with brush and yard debris and drop materials at the station.

Satti asked for a show of hands for how many meeting attendees owned pick-up trucks capable of bringing brush to the dump, a query that rankled Passero.

“You’re in the business, let’s face it, okay, so don’t tell me ―” Passero said before council President Reona Dyess called for a point of order.

“Point of order is I have the floor,” Satti said, accusing the mayor of being unwilling to be challenged on his points. “And this is not a debate back and forth.”

“Then you can be civil,” Passero retorted.

Satti said there are hundreds of local small businesses that, under the new rules, would be unable to charge reasonable prices for their brush-hauling services.

“The minute these people say I want my hedges brought down 10 feet and I say it used to cost you $400 and now it’ll cost you $4,000, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “There are ways and solutions, so I appreciate what the mayor had offered.”

Passero, saying he declined to respond to Satti’s “hyperbole,” said the small landscaping businesses in the city should not be undercharging their customers for brush disposal costs.

“The taxpayers in this city should not be subsidizing that,” he said.

Council President Pro Tempore James Burke, liaison to the Public Works Department, said he was willing to set up a committee meeting on the issue with department Director Brian Sear.

“At the end of the day, I encourage us not to point fingers at each other and to figure out a solution,” he said. “We need to do the best we can by our small business, but we can’t do that at the expense of creating a dangerous environmental situation for the residents of our city or anyone that happens be traveling on that bridge at any given time.”

j.penney@theday.com