Councillors want tax cut to match higher trash fee
Rollback of condo subsidies could start next year and continue through to 2022
Proposed changes to the city’s waste and recycling financial plan could see Calgary households pay up to $5 in additional fees every month for trash collection, and an end to subsidies for condo dwellers.
A report slated to go to a city committee Wednesday outlines a possible shift in where the city’s funding for its black cart program comes from.
Under the current plan, $85 million of the city ’s $165-million budget for waste and recycling services is spent on the black cart program. Of that $85 million, $45 million comes from user fees, with the remaining $40 million coming from tax revenue.
But the proposed changes would see user fees make up $65 million of the budget, with $13 million coming from taxes and another $7 million from existing tax support — reducing the taxpayer take to $20 million.
The extra fees would be needed to make up for gaps in funding should the city decide to cut subsidies to the black and green cart programs, including a $3-million black cart subsidy for the approximately 73,000 condos in the city.
The rollback of subsidies could start next year and would continue through to 2022.
The report says moving to a feebased system would make billing and costs more transparent. It also says the city will look at offering “variable cart sizes” with a “variable pricing ” model to help offset costs.
Coun. Shane Keating said, if approved, the additional fees should be met with an equal reduction in taxes, amounting to a “net zero” cost to Calgarians.
“What we have to end up with is a reduction in the tax base to equal the increased fees for the black bins,” he said.
“The fee increase should equal back to what we’re getting in taxes, and I’m not sure that we should be getting anything else but that.”
Coun. Jeromy Farkas went one step further, saying taxes should be reduced beyond balancing the fees.
“I would say after years and years of massive increases in fees like these, holding the line or a net zero approach is frankly not good enough anymore,” Farkas said. “We need to be looking at ways that we can actually reduce costs form a taxpayer perspective.”
Both Farkas and Coun. Ward Sutherland, who chairs the utilities and corporate services committee, said privatizing some of the city’s waste removal could reduce costs and offer Calgarians a choice in service.
“If the private industry can provide the same service for less, we have to go there,” Sutherland said. “Right now we give no options ... is that really good value and good customer service?”
Sutherland also said offering Calgarians different-sized bins will help reduce costs and waste, because “one size doesn’t fit all.”
Coun. Druh Farrell, who is also in favour of balancing more fees with fewer taxes, said much of the current plan’s revenue is subsidized by revenue from landfills, also known as tipping costs.
She says adopting the new plan will offer more choice and create incentives for waste reduction while helping the environment.
“It was a backward way of looking at waste and recycling,” she said. “We were making money the more garbage we collected ... but it wasn’t taking into account the true cost, the long-term cost.”
Since the green carts were rolled out by the city last year, black cart pickup was reduced to an everyother-week schedule.
Farkas said it wouldn’t make financial sense to charge Calgarians roughly 44 per cent more in fees for a service the city provides half as often.
Green bin collection could also be moving to a bi-weekly schedule between November and April after the city found Calgarians put less than half the amount waste in the green carts during the winter months than they do in the fall.
A proposal going to the city next week says the change could save the city more than $2 million annually.