Picking up the garbage bill
Residents will have to pay for collection one way or another after city funds run dry
Members of Morris’ Health and Sanitation Committee have the unenviable task of playing Scrooge as Christmas approaches.
The city’s Garbage Fund, which pays for the weekly trash pickup, will be out of money by the end of the fiscal year, April 30, 2010.
For as long as anyone can remember, people living in the city limits have not paid for garbage collection, and more recently, the recycling pickup.
With two landfills operating in the city during the 1980’s and 1990’s, the city received enough money to cover the cost of garbage collection. At one point the Garbage fund actually had a surplus of more than $2 million.
There was certainly logic to the idea that if city residents had to put up with the landfills, they should get something in return, and that was free garbage pickup.
But Community Landfill has been closed for 10 years and Environtech is accepting less and less trash, as it expects to reach capacity by the end of 2012. The landfill has to accept local trash through that time.
The result is less and less money from a landfill going into the Garbage Fund.
City Clerk John Enger told the committee last week, the Garbage Fund had a balance of $402,258 on May 1, 2009. Revenues of $438,632, almost totally from property taxes, are expected during the fiscal year.
Payments to Allied Waste for garbage pickup and other expenses will total $795,263 for the fiscal year. This will leave the Garbage Fund with a balance of $45,627 on April 30, 2010. The city does not pay to dump resident’s garbage in the Environtech Landfill.
Recycling is paid for from the Solid Waste fund, which will have a balance of $50,723 on April 30, 2010.
The city clerk said that for the fiscal year starting May, 1, 2010, costs of the garbage and recycling collection contracts will be $1,160,000, and the city will have less than $100,000 in the two funds.
The committees choices are to charge residents a monthly fee or raise property taxes.
The city’s tax levy must be submitted by the end of December, so any increases will have to be determined by then. The city council’s policy for many years has been to try and maintain a tax rate of .65 percent.
The city could double the Garbage Fund tax rate to .20 percent and bring in more than $700,000. With increases in the Police Pension, Social Security and Medicare funds, which must be paid, it would be difficult to maintain the .65 percent tax rate without depriving the General Fund of property tax money.
The General Fund is being hit from several directions, as sales taxes are down about $190,000 through five months and of the fiscal year and income taxes from the state are expected to drop, perhaps as much as 15 percent.
Any property tax increase costs the owner of a $300,000 house more than the owner of a $150,000 house.
The other solution is a monthly fee, probably less than $15, that residents pay for garbage collection.
Allied or any future garbage collector, would bill residents and collect the fee, taking the city completely out of the garbage collection business.
Getting the city out of the garbage collection business is what should happen and probably should have happened years ago.
Michael Farrell is a writer for the Morris Daily Herald. He can be reached at (815) 942-3221 x 2028 or by e-mail at mfarrell@morrisdailyherald.com
