“Shall the city of West Peoria impose a garbage collection tax with a tax rate of up to 1.10 percent …,” reads the referendum that will appear on the primary ballots of West Peoria voters on March 20.
“It’s misleading. People read that and think we’re trying to raise their taxes sky high,” Dillon said Wednesday. “That’s simply not the case.”
If approved by voters, the referendum will increase the tax bill of West Peoria property owners. That is not in dispute.
However, at the same time, approval will eliminate the quarterly bill homeowners receive now from Waste Management to pay to pick up their garbage and recycling materials. The referendum seeks to change the way garbage fees are collected, not so much the cost of the service.
Although that will change slightly also.
“After a couple of years, we expect the cost to go down,” Dillon said.
Currently, residents pay $17 a month to have their garbage picked up every week; $5 more a month to have their recycling materials picked up twice a month. They are billed every three months.
By including garbage collection fees in the annual property tax bill, residents would pay about $21 a month, a fee that includes recycling. Recycling would no longer be an option.
In order to make the switch happen, the city would need to borrow a currently unknown amount from its reserve account to pay for the first year, or so, of service until tax revenues rolled in. After that, Dillon, said, the cost per month could be reduced by a couple of dollars, and the city would reimburse the reserve fund with fees collected through property taxes. The city would collect the tax and pay Waste Management its contracted fee.
The garbage fee would be displayed as a separate fee on the property owner’s tax bill, not added into the general obligation of the taxpayer. Everyone would pay the same amount, regardless of the assessed value of the property.
Even if the referendum is approved, customers would likely continue to receive their quarterly bills from Waste Management through the end of 2018.
Dillon said the change is needed to tighten up billing practices and to bring tardy or non-compliant customers into compliance.
“People stop paying and we stop collecting their garbage,” Dillon said. “That leads to health and safety issues and it ties up a lot of time of city staff trying to deal with garbage issues that could be spent on more positive things.”
To read the full story, visit http://www.pjstar.com/news/20180221/quarterly-bill-or-property-taxes-west-peoria-ponders-garbage-fees.