Commissioners agree to a $200 parcel fee to cover trash-disposal shortfall
None of the commissioners liked the idea, they said at Monday's budget workshop, but at least three of them said it was preferable to other options, which included an increase in property taxes.
Dan DeWitt
Brevard NewsBeat
BREVARD — Transylvania County Commissioners agreed on Monday to levy a $200 fee on improved parcels — the ones containing homes or businesses that produce garbage — to fill a growing Solid Waste Department funding gap.
All of the commissioners expressed displeasure about the additional charge, but Commission Chair Jason Chappell and commissioners David Guice and Teresa McCall said it was preferable to other options, which included increasing property taxes, closing the county’s three collection centers or raising the per-bag disposal fee to $12.
The parcel fee, if formally approved before the July 1 start of the 2022 fiscal year, would be accompanied by an elimination of the longstanding $1.50 per-bag disposal fee. As long as the City of Brevard and the Town of Rosman retain their current fee structures, it would apply only to parcels in unincorporated Transylvania. The $60 per-ton tipping fee charged at the county landfill west of Rosman will not change.
The basic problem commissioners needed to address, County Manager Jaime Laughter said at the start of Monday’s budget workshop: the current fee structure does not come close to covering the cost of maintaining the county’s landfill and its needed expansion.
The shortfall has typically run about $700,000 in recent years and swelled to $1.1 million in fiscal year 2020. With $663,000 earmarked for permitting and engineering costs associated with the expansion, the department’s budget is expected to swell to $4.1 million next fiscal year and the budget gap to $1.7 million.
Chappell argued that charging the parcel fee advanced transparency by ending the practice of pulling money out of savings to cover the shortfall and is needed to pay for the accumulating costs of maintaining and monitoring existing dump sites while starting the process of opening new ones.
“To a lot of individuals it’s ‘once I toss it away, I’m done with it,’ ” he said about household garbage. “That’s not the way solid waste works in county government . . . I think the county has to move ahead with this.”
All of the options presented came with significant downsides, Laughter said. The increased property taxes would eliminate the county’s ability to issue bonds to cover future solid waste improvements and apply to vacant land that does not produce trash.
Though the closure of the county’s collection centers could reduce the parcel fee to $110, it would mean a loss of convenience to county residents.
“I don’t see our citizens driving eight or 10 miles to throw out a bag of garbage,” said Commissioner Larry Chapman.
The $12 per bag fee would be unpalatable to residents, increase the vulnerability of collection center attendants handling large sums of money and possibly lead residents to dump garbage illegally.
The disadvantages of the parcel fee: it eliminates the incentive for recycling and, because it is applied equally regardless of property value, imposes a proportionately heavier burden on financially strapped residents, including retirees living on a fixed income.
In many cases, they are also the residents who have the least impact on the landfill, said a private trash hauler, Frank Leahy, who spoke at the meeting.
Some of his elderly clients throw out only one bag a week, he said, while some other customers dispose of 150 gallons. “To charge that little old lady two-hundred bucks (annually) for one bag a week and charge the same to the other fella who’s filling four or five cans, it doesn’t seem right,” Leahy said.
To partly address this concern, the fee proposal would offer a break in the parcel fee to the 697 elderly, disabled and low-income residents who qualify for the state homestead exemption on property taxes.
Commissioners did not include a provision that Laughter presented as way to continue to encourage recycling — require residents to bring recycled material along with their trash to collection centers. Though the market for recyclables, especially plastic, has declined in recent years and accounts for only 2 percent of solid waste revenue, she said, it plays a crucial role in reducing the stream of solid waste that flows into the landfill.
All of the commissioners said they had received calls and emails from residents concerned about the additional costs. These views were represented at the meeting by Leahy, who also said the fee proposal, by eliminating the per-bag cost to customers, would put him out of business.
Pisgah Forest resident Bruce Gleasman brought a handmade sign that said “No Tax for TRASH! Cut Budget by 2%,” to the podium as he spoke out against the fee.
He compared it to a barbed fish hook that, once embedded, cannot be removed. “If you add a tax to the property owners, that tax will never go away,” he said.
He instead encouraged commissioners to reexamine the budget as a whole to find cuts to cover the shortfall. That seemed to strike a chord with Chapman who asked if the county could find savings in other funds to at least delay the full implementation of the $200 parcel fee.
Chapman remained noncommittal at the end of the workshop when Chappell asked for consensus. Vice Chair Jake Dalton said he was “on an island” as the sole dissenter, adding that he he favored eliminating the collection centers.
“As a small business owner, I think you have to cut expenses first,” he said.
Guice rejected this option, saying that residents he had talked to clearly favored retaining the centers. Broader budget cuts would reduce essential services such as education and law enforcement, he said, and added about the solid waste budget shortfall, “This is a serious problem that we have to manage.”
I have a question: If we have to pay $200 a year to dump our garbage, what is the incentive to recycle?
:
Great coverage on this. Thanks.