To the Editor,
Based on the May 20 edition of The Star-Herald, Waste Management, who has the garbage pickup contract for the county, has asked the Board of Supervisors to approve two hikes in residential garbage collection fees for 2021. The assertion is that disposal costs are rising, so residents must be billed more. In 2018 they had a similar claim and raised their fees at that time as well. Meanwhile, as residents are nickel and dimed or dollared each year for garbage pickup, many in the county pay absolutely nothing. Some have paid zilch ever since Waste Management got the contract. No, these aren’t Senior Citizens on limited incomes for whom the already $19.00 a month fee, soon to be around $20.00 if Supervisors approve, can be a financial bite. No, these aren’t the approximately 27% of residents living at or below the poverty line.
Indeed, the major freeloaders paying nothing for garbage collection are the over 100 churches speckling the city and county landscape. Another group is all government buildings. Why are churches freeloading while residents and businesses must pay for garbage collection? Initially, in order to secure the county garbage contract and beat out another competitor (or competitors), Waste Management dangled the contractual perk that not a single church would have to pay for garbage pickup and hence would get it free. They also dangled this freebie to all government buildings as well. Now, once again they are whining that their costs are going up and residents must pay more while meanwhile a large number of “customers” get free garbage collection at absolutely no charge.
Currently I pay $19.00 a month to have about two Walmart recycled plastic bags of garbage picked up each week, because I compost and recycle to minimize my trash. In contrast, one large church nearby periodically wheels out several full bins of garbage for free pickup, even while residents are restricted to using only one bin. This means that the fee which I and all other residents and businesses pay for garbage pickup, whether we are rich or poor and whether we attend a church or not, underwrites or subsidizes Waste Management to provide free garbage collection to a hundred or more churches and numerous government buildings. While some are asked to pay more (and more) each year for garbage service, these freeloaders year after year continue to pay nada. Now why is that?
In a letter I wrote to The Star-Herald in 2018, when this issue first arose regarding Waste Management, I explained that garbage pickup locally is a fee. It is not a tax. In some other places garbage pickup is characterized as a tax, and sometimes even appended to property taxes and paid that way. Since churches are exempt from all property taxes, churches in those locations avoid paying for garbage collection as well.
Locally, because garbage collection is a fee, no legal justification exists to unfairly provide churches a fee exemption. This was an unequitable aspect of the Waste Management contract from the get go. With Waste Management now once again seeking a fee hike (two of them), I suggest once again that they instead start charging 100+ churches, as well as government buildings, 19.00 per bin. Every fee hike further unfairly burdens paying customers. Even where garbage collection is a tax, citizens have protested that churches should nevertheless pay to have their garbage collected and not be exempt.
Repeating what I wrote to The Star-Herald in 2018, the Chicago Tribune (Sept. 8, 2015), published a letter similar to mine about this same situation. That writer was forthright and blunt in expressing what I’m also saying. “Charging Chicago homeowners [for garbage collection] and at the same time exempting churches is an insult to homeowners and amounts to yet another form of subsidizing religion; churches pay no property taxes for the many municipal services they receive, which means these services are being underwritten by the rest of us, whether we like it or not. It isn’t unreasonable to ask them to pay to remove the garbage they create...”
And yes, there are a large number of places that grant Senior Citizens either a reduction or an exemption in garbage collection fees. In fact, Waste Management itself may offer such a Senior Citizen discount. Local governance should have looked into that when first considering the Waste Management contract and if not then they need to do it now, along with addressing the unfairness of current exemptions.
