INC NEWS - trashy thoughts

[kjj1 at duke.edu]

For what it is worth--I would prefer a tax increase to pay for yard waste 
(and bulk trash pick up services too) if necessary. I just have to suck up 
a "fee"--at least I can deduct a tax increase.
Kelly J.

--On Friday, January 21, 2005 7:40 PM -0500 Barry Ragin <bragin at nc.rr.com> 
wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>>
>
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