This has been a long time coming.
Mayor John Whitmire
Houston Mayor John Whitmire is expected to propose a monthly fee for trash services as part of a plan to close a $174 million deficit in the budget he will present Tuesday, Council Member Tiffany D. Thomas confirmed Thursday.
The new fee would start at $5 per month for the first two years, then increase annually by $5 until it reaches $25 per month, she said. Five other sources briefed on the plan said they were given the same information.
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As part of Whitmire’s budget plan, the roughly $100 million Solid Waste budget would be moved from the cash-strapped general fund and into the city utility system within Houston Public Works, Thomas and the sources said.
The general fund – which faces a $174 million deficit for the budget year that starts July 1 – pays for police, fire, parks, libraries and most other core services.
In essence, such a change would mean funding Solid Waste with water and sewer bills and the new monthly fee, rather than primarily by property and sales taxes.
Some of the sources said Whitmire’s budget plan also includes charging the city utility system a fee for its pipes occupying the city right of way, moving additional water and sewer funds from the utility system to the general fund.
It’s unclear how the proposal would affect Solid Waste services.
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The nonprofit Environment Texas has urged Houston leaders to adopt a trash fee for three years, said its director, Luke Metzger.
“A solid waste fee could help provide the revenue to improve recycling, waste reduction efforts and other things,” Metzger said.
The fee could also benefit the environment if it is structured so that residents pay lower fees for having smaller bins, he said. San Antonio, Fort Worth and Austin all use tiered rates.
“That’s been found to encourage people to reduce their waste and recycle more because there’s a financial incentive to do so,” Metzger said.
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Council Member Sallie Alcorn, who chairs the council’s budget committee, did not discuss the details of the proposal but said the administration was putting forward a “smart budget” that maximized the city’s resources.
Council Member Mary Nan Huffman said she has not been told the details of the proposal but said she is not confident the move would improve Solid Waste operations.
“If we could guarantee the residents of the city of Houston that imposing a trash fee would guarantee that their services would be better, then maybe,” Huffman said. “But I haven’t seen anything like that yet.”
Council Members Edward Pollard and Abbie Kamin said they were not briefed on the plan. Kamin said any revenue generated by a trash fee would need to be dedicated to waste services.
“We have seen a pattern of raiding of other funds that are not for their intended purposes,” she said.
Pollard wondered whether the proposed fee would keep pace with inflation in the future.
“Did we think that through?” Pollard said. “Is that the right number then, or will we be back in the exact same space that we are today with a fee …that is not going to actually make a real difference at that point in time?”
Thomas called for robust discussion on the proposal and other options the city could consider.
“I just don’t know if we’re giving Houstonians an opportunity to opine on what they can afford versus what other cities are charging,” she said.
I’ve been critical of the Mayor’s fiscal policies, especially his utter aversion to any revenue-enhancing ideas before now, so I appreciate that he has finally taken this step, which I believe is necessary and overdue. I’m not sure about the part of this that mixes Solid Waste in with water and sewer funds, as that seems susceptible to pressure to borrow from one to shore up the other, but right now I don’t have enough information to evaluate it further. (The Houston People’s Budget Campaign sent out a press release that also criticized this aspect of the proposal, as well as it not being scaled to account for income levels.) It would be nice to have some time to study and debate this, maybe have a public hearing or two, but it seems we’re moving forward quickly. I look forward to learning more. And before you ask, no we don’t already have a solid waste fee.
The fact that our taxes are fungible led to this problem for trash in the first place. If you mix this money with water/flooding you have the same problem.
This would obviously be more efficient to collect once a year as taxes. Adding this fee is the same failure that adding toll roads is.