Trash Fee

I voted against Frankfort's current trash fee, which is just a regressive property fee that is only called a 'trash fee' in order to legally exploit a Kentucky Revised Statute that allows us to charge a fee for garbage collection.  This fee is currently the equivalent of raising the average property taxes 25% while not allowing a voter referendum on the matter.  

The fee's actual purpose was to raise $600,000 for our general fund in order to help preserve our 'rainy day' fund.  The fee is being funneled through the trash program into our general operating budget.  If anyone wants to see the truth for themselves, they can compare our 2008-2009 budget to our current budget (both budgets are available at City Hall and online at www.frankfort.ky.gov).

While I believe that cost-saving measures would have been preferable to relying on the 'rainy day' fund in order the balance the budget, I also maintain that either approach would have been better than dramatically raising taxes during a recession.  For what it's worth, I understand why many of my colleagues are reluctant to dip any further into the reserve fund.  I agree that it has been misspent in the past.  It was wrong to waste millions of dollars from the 'rainy day' fund on unnecessarily lavish expenditures during good times, but it's equally wrong to insist on preserving that same fund when the alternative is to dramatically increase taxes during a recession and further damage the local economy.

It's easy to see why folks are angry over the trash fee, and it would also be easy for a Commission candidate to cash in on the political benefits of pledging to recall it.  I'm not pledging to recall the fee however, but to reform it instead.  It makes a lot of sense to sustain a service through related fees rather than through taxes.  It wouldn't cost the average taxpayer any more than they're currently paying if we lowered taxes while raising the fee.  This would simply shift the revenue stream from a tax structure to a fee structure.  An effective fee structure would actually save the average Frankfort property owner money while still maintaining the same level of service.

Literally every other city in the region also charges a trash fee, but they use their fees to fully fund their trash programs, which is more efficient because it eliminates the need to seek funds and to budget for that service. This is only more efficient, however, if the service is fully self-funding. 

The current trash fee does not fully fund our trash program.  The $60 fee only covers 40% of the program's operating expenses.  This is why Frankfort's fee is currently so low compared to other cities. 

If we were to actually raise the fee and then lower taxes until the budget barely breaks even, as I'm proposing, then we would fully fund our trash program, therefore realizing greater efficiency and increased savings with no additional burden to the average taxpayer. 

My second suggestion is to charge a variable rate based on volume rather than a flat rate. This would be more equitable, because everyone would pay according to how much they actually use the service (meaning people who throw away less trash would pay less in fees). This would also encourage less waste and more recycling, saving the city even more money at the end of the day.

There are a few different ways to charge by volume. The most efficient method I'm aware of is to distribute stickers (presumably in bulk, people could order a month's or even a year's supply in advance) that say "Frankfort Trash" on them for $X apiece. The city would then only pick up bags that feature a sticker. This way folks would effectively pay a small fee for every bag of trash produced, and the city wouldn't have to measure every house's trash volume, or worry about billing, because the fee would be tacked on at the front end, when people purchase the stickers. This option would reduce many of the city's current expenses (because we wouldn't need to do any tracking or billing), but would require a little more effort on the part of citizens. 

It would also be possible (and perhaps a little easier for people) for the city to distribute uniform trash cans to everyone, with each household claiming as many cans as it needs. There would then be a fixed rate to unload each can. This would require an upfront capital expense (because the city would have to provide a bunch of trash cans), but since the ultimate goal of measuring volume is to reduce waste and encourage recycling, then this start-up expense would be eligible for state and federal funds to expand recycling programs. It may even be feasible to incorporate the "one-armed bandit' collection system into this model, further increasing efficiency. This would  be a most graceful compromise between efficiency, service and expense (although I still prefer the sticker method for pure efficiency). 

It would also be possible to equip the trucks with scales and actually charge by the pound, but this greater accuracy would be much more expensive and ultimately less efficient. 

Charging by volume will reduce waste and improve recycling because people will be able to save money simply by sticking relevant waste into a recycling bin instead of a trash can.

Recycling is free because it's much more cost-efficient than trash-collection. It costs the city about as much to pick up recycling as it does to pick up trash. The difference is that we pay tipping fees (based on weight) to a private landfill to dispose of our trash, but we are actually paid for our recyclable goods when we drop them off at a recycling plant. It's obviously more cost-efficient to sell our recyclable goods than to pay tipping fees to dump those same goods in a landfill, and every ton of waste that moves from the trash program to the recycling program therefore saves the city a little more money.