SEDRO-WOOLLEY — More than 100 people packed City Hall Wednesday to urge the City Council to keep a proposed solid waste and recycling transfer station out of town.

They called Deluxe Recycling and Disposal’s proposal a dump and envisioned noise, smell, traffic, pollution. It would be demoralizing and distracting for kids, they said.

But Deluxe co-owner Larry McCarter sees it differently. And he thinks, in time, Sedro-Woolley residents will come around.

“I don’t think they understand,” he said of his opponents. “I do. I think it is a good thing.”

Dumps that stink are a thing of the past, McCarter said by phone Friday. What he will build is a modern solid waste and recycling facility that curbs waste, feeds tax dollars to the city and provides jobs and learning opportunities for residents, he said.

Deluxe will be a great neighbor to the high School, McCarter said. Kids will go to Deluxe for internships and for field trips to enjoy a lush forested area he foresees as a tree museum and for after-school work.

“I am a parent, and my children work at different jobs including at the recyling facility (in Ferndale). My son is an employee at the electronic computer recycling station, and he and some other high school students are paid by the hour to come in after school for a couple hours,” McCarter said.

The job has taught his son about recycling and about technology, he said. “It is an outstanding learning opportunity,” McCarter said, “... I have a teaching degree, and I know what I am talking about.”

More than 100 Sedro-Woolley High School students who walked out of class in May in protest of Deluxe and the many more who signed a petition will probably require more coaxing from McCarter. And Steve McCartt, a teacher at the school, also doubts that the high school and transfer station will mesh well.

“It is going to be terrible. Just the whole idea of all the noise and the trucks — I just think, as a teacher, it is terrible,” McCartt said, “... I don’t care how you slice it. It stinks.”

“The proximity to the high school to me is just unfathomable,” he said. “I am all for students5 doing internships and working within corporations. I am not for...the location.”

A letter from McCarter distributed at Wednesday night’s admitted that Deluxe has yet to win over public opinion, but said that the company will try.

“Perhaps, Deluxe erred by not conducting its own outreach to explain the recycling proposal to the community earlier in the process,” the letter stated. “... It is with these thoughts that, over the next four to six weeks, Deluxe intends to begin a process to address the concerns of the citizens of Sedro-Woolley.”

The letter states that Deluxe will hold town hall style forums, lead tours of other recycling facilities and unveil plans to work with the school district and the high school in particular.

After hearing about the decidedly anti-Deluxe tenor of Wednesday’s meeting, McCarter said he probably will not hold any town hall meetings and will delay his outreach campaign until October. But perhaps the company will post a Web site for residents to read about the proposed facility and give feedback, he said. Additionally, once the facility is constructed he said he will invite residents to come in and see it and ask questions.

“I hear people are concerned. That is why we are going to have information so people know what they are talking about,” he said.

Though winning over public opinion is not going to be easy, the Deluxe co-owner remains undeterred. “They want me to give that up,” he said. “I am not giving it up.”

Instead he is pursuing the necessary permits, fighting Annie Janicki’s appeal and thinking up a new landscape plan — maybe called the Northwest Tree Museum — that will recall Sedro-Woolley’s logging heritage and impress residents, he said. “You are going to have a row of every tree of the Northwest,” he said. “I got a tree book of the Northwest, and there is probably 50 different varieties.”

“It would be something that I would really like to offer to Annie as an olive branch, a fir branch,” said McCarter.

• Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .