Madden defends trash fee at forum
Charge needed to prepare for higher costs, mayor says
About 75 people took advantage of an opportunity Monday night to hear from and quiz Mayor Patrick Madden about his proposed 2018 city budget.
Dubbed Budget & Beers, the 90-minute forum held inside Brown’s Brewing Co.’s Revolution Hall, just a couple doors down from City Hall, borrowed from a series of public workshops Madden hosted last year after presenting his first budget proposal as mayor, opening with a tutorial on city finances, followed by an overview of the mayor’s $73.6 million proposed 2018 city budget.
The spending plan, unveiled at an Oct. 6 news conference, calls for an increase in city property taxes of about 1.7 percent, below the state-mandated cap on such increases. It also includes a new fee that would cover the city’s solid waste collection and disposal costs, with property owners paying $190 a year per housing unit for trash pickup and recycling, instead of the $29 annual recycling fee currently billed.
While many in the audience were critical of the new fee, which opponents have referred to as a “hidden tax,” Madden defended the move as an important step in better dealing with rising disposal costs attributed to the rapidly declining amount of available landfill space.
“A better budget looks beyond the 12 months ahead; it looks at the things coming down the pike,” Madden said. “This is just the beginning of the process. It’s starting to move us in the direction we need to go.”
Madden reiterated the reasons he gave Oct. 6 for proposing the fee, which include ensuring property owners pay their fair share of
solid waste costs, providing incentive for residents and businesses to recycle and getting tax-exempt properties who use the service to pay for it. Seniors who receive the state’s Enhanced STAR tax exemption would be exempt from the solid waste fee, as would any property owner who uses a private collection service.
“We don’t feel the pain of waste,” Madden said Monday night. “We don’t feel the pain of not recycling. It’s been so easy to just throw things out, to purge the house every year and just put it out at the curb.”
Among the concerns expressed Monday night was that having landlords pay a fee would encourage tenants to reduce waste and that the added fee could price low-income tenants out of many previously affordable properties. Madden, who spent 30 years helping low- and moderate-income people to buy their own homes as executive director of the Troy Rehabilitation & Improvement Program before running for mayor, admitted the proposal was not a perfect solution and said he was willing to consider other ideas, but he said the possibility exists of the city saving significantly on its estimated annual trash disposal cost of about $3.5 million, a savings that would lead to the fee being lowered.
“I can’t believe we can’t take 20, 30 percent of our garbage out of the waste stream,” said Madden, adding that for each 10 percent reduction in waste, the city would save about $100,000 in tipping fees, the amount charged by landfills for accepting trash.
Madden was also questioned about four new hirings included in the spending plan: a code enforcement director, a city engineer, a recycling coordinator and an account clerk to deal specifically with the solid waste program. In each case, he said, the job was his response to concerns addressed by taxpayers to him and City Council members at council meetings, community forums and neighborhood meetings, as well as in private conversations.
“What we’re trying to do is rebuild the foundation of the city,” in the face of a crippling fiscal crisis that dates back to the 1990s, Madden said. “We’re trying to make things better for our children.”
Madden said his proposal again sticks to principles of what he called “fact-based budgeting” in introducing his 2017 spending package, using realistic spending and revenue estimates and not using one-time revenue to cover ongoing costs. He said those principles have been proven in many ways, from positive reviews by both state and private auditors and the city’s expectation that it will end a second straight fiscal year with a budget surplus to an improvement in the city’s credit evaluation by bondrating firm Standard & Poor’s.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Madden said in concluding his 45-minute presentation. “We’ve still got a ways to go, but I’m convinced we’re going in the right direction.
“We have great things going on in the city, and I don’t want to see them undermined by our financial situation.”