INC NEWS - trashy thoughts

[Barry Ragin]

interesting points, Randy. we will consider them in our discussion.

my concern is coming up with a payment system that won't be rejected in 
a knee-jerk fashion by some elements of the city's body politic.

barry

ps - the new list is set up to reply-to-sender, rather than 
reply-to-list. i don't have a problem with it either way, but i think 
that is different from the old list. i suspect that a number of 
postings are going to get lost before people figure it out.


On Friday, January 21, 2005, at 06:58  PM, RW Pickle wrote:

> I suspect Barry is right as to the participants in the current yard 
> waste
> plan. But I do not see an equitable assesment based on the property 
> value
> system. Rich, poor, good neighborhood or bad neighborhood, yard waste 
> and
> domestic trash is a common denominator. That is unless you have no 
> trees
> or grass on your particular property. Then I guess you could get an
> exemption.
>
> What this does for rental property is (if included as a $1 fee a month
> across the board and billed and collected through a program such as
> water/sewer billing) is that it puts the funds out there to force
> landlords to see that tennants keep their property in order. Whereas if
> tax based, the landlord pays it and just ends up passing the cost 
> along in
> higher rent and never has to enforce any cleanup. Any new thoughts on
> administering some sort of fee structure has to put the burden of it on
> the person who is on the property. If it's an owner, then it'll be on
> him/her. If a rental property, then on the individuals living there. I
> would also like to see it attached to a time frame to cut down on some 
> of
> the boarded houses (no water use; no fee payments). If after a year of 
> not
> having any water to a property, it would set off a chain of events that
> would get the house reopened again. Even billed as a yearly fee (like 
> our
> cars are) doesn't bother me. It would have to be done to the property
> owners in that case and could easily be done a tax time as an 
> assesment.
> It may take an act of the legislature to do it that way though.
>
> Our taxes went up this past year and our services went down. There's my
> initial problem with the system. I pay for an educational system yet I
> have no kids. Everyone has a yard or a tree in it. Why shouldn't 
> everyone
> pay for that as well? From what I read in the news, our educational 
> system
> in Durham is still on the upswing (from its poor conditions several 
> years
> ago). Maybe if everyone payed "trash fees" it would improve as well.
> Something needs to change.
>
> I don't have a problem with the charge for carts if that is a problem. 
> It
> can be divided in the same monthly fashion. It has to be on the person 
> on
> the property and not based on percentages of property value or 
> included in
> propety taxes. Otherwise there seems to be no way to enforce anything.
>
> Randy Pickle
> Forest Hills
>
>
>> the amount of revenue generated by the yard waste program in FY 04 was
>> approximately 19,000 (participating households) X $50, or about
>> $950,000. In FY 05 it appears to be declining (14,000 x $60 = 
>> $840,000).
>>
>> To generate that much revenue from each of Durham's approximately
>> 80,000 households would mean about $12/household, if it were divided
>> equally without regard to property value. An equitable assessment 
>> based
>> on property value might require a property tax hike of $20 - 30/year 
>> on
>> the most expensive houses, and $2 - 3/year on the lowest valued
>> property. I'm just guessing here, but my guess is that most of the
>> households that were participating in the yard waste program were in
>> the higher assessment range.
>>
>> Personally, that seems reasonable to me, though I can't speak for the
>> Neighborhood Association at this time. We will discuss this at our
>> February meeting.
>>
>> barry ragin
>>
>>