gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM -- Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long is telling elected officials he thinks it's "imperative" for Durham to emulate other North Carolina cities and begin charging residents a monthly collection fee for garbage and recycling.
Long said the move would enable his department to reduce its annual demand for property tax revenues, which in fiscal 2011-12 will cover $12.5 million of a $21.3 million budget.
He noted that Durham is an outlier among major North Carolina cities in not charging a collection fee. Ten of the 12 communities Durham usually compares itself to already have such a levy, Greensboro and Winston-Salem being the major exceptions.
A recent accounting change that labeled the Solid Waste Management Department's operation purely an "enterprise" fund implies that the department should lower its reliance on the city's tax-fortified general fund, Long said.
Long floated the idea during a recent City Council budget review. His boss, City Manager Tom Bonfield, was quick to point out that his fiscal 2011-12 budget request doesn't include any request for a fee.
"It is not a recommendation" for the coming year, though it is something administrators are "continuing to explore" for future years and that might be worth talking about in detail early in the council's budget review for fiscal 2012-13, he said.
Bonfield added that a change from tax-paid to fee-paid collections wouldn't be driven by Solid Waste's operational needs. "This is all just about how you pay for the service," he said.
Long's comments took City Council members by surprise. "Thanks for waking us up," Councilman Eugene Brown quipped, alluding to the subject having cropped up fairly late in a daylong meeting.
Reaction among them was mixed.
Mayor Bill Bell pointed out that the imposition of a collection fee would allow a future council to roll back property taxes by an amount equivalent to the new revenue.
Long singled out as a potential example for Durham to follow the $2.95 monthly fee Asheville charges residents for recycling service.
He said a similarly sized levy here would raise about $2.3 million, about the same amount as a penny on the city's property tax rate generate for the city.
But Councilwoman Diane Catotti -- who's stepping down at the end of her term later this year -- noted that a collection fee could hurt lower-income residents.
"Clearly, fees for general services are more regressive than the property tax," she said. "I might rather leave [garbage and recycling collections] in the tax rate."
Were an Asheville-sized fee on offer in Durham for fiscal 2011-12, it would cost most homeowners $35.40. A revenue-equivalent rollback of property taxes would put only about $15 back in the hands of the owner of a $150,000 house.
But anyone with a house valued in the neighborhood of $350,000 and above would get more back from a property tax rollback than the fee would cost. Business owners and anyone else who uses use a private dumpster collection service would also benefit.
Durham officials have long chafed at comparisons of their city's tax rate to those of other cities, such as Raleigh, that rely more heavily on service fees than their own. Those that do can use lower tax rates, but the overall, fee-inclusive cost burden for residents can be a little different.
Over the years, Long has been more willing than most Durham department directors to suggest major changes to the financing of his operation.
In 2007, he floated the idea of establishing a $51.90 annual fee to finance expanded yard-waste and bulky-item pickups. That proposal never made it past the talking stage, as then-City Manager Patrick Baker declined to support it.
