Trash talking the clean up fee

WE KNOW Mayor Nutter has a mess on his hands. The economy has bashed the city budget, and the options for closing a $150 million hole are relatively limited. To close the gap, he has proposed a $300-a-year fee to pay for trash pickup.

Nutter has said that property taxes as a source to raise revenues are off-limits, citing the dysfunction of the Board of Revision of Taxes. In January, he froze assessments for the two years he says it will take to fix the BRT.

But there is increasingly compelling case to make for revisiting property taxes instead of the trash fee. For one thing, fixing the BRT could take much longer than two years, especially since five members of the board filed suit to derail the city's plan to bring assessments under the control of the executive branch. (That makes the BRT head zombie in the government-zombie-agencies that refuse to die; followed closely by some of the city's row offices, like the Clerk of Quarter Sessions.)

And frankly, in this city, two years has a way of turning into 10. To keep property taxes off the table until things get fixed is unrealistic.

The mayor says it would be unfair to impose changes under the current, broken property-assessment system. But the fact is, we've been using this same broken system for a long time. And on the question of fairness, the trash fee is arguably a lot more unfair.

For one thing, it's a flat fee imposed on everyone, no matter how much trash he produces. It's highly regressive - imposing bigger burdens on low-income taxpayers - and very unfair to the property owners who are already paying more property taxes than they should. A report last year estimated that when the city does get around to fixing the assessment system, 56 percent of homes are facing tax increases, and 44 percent will see a decrease. If you're now paying too much, a $300 trash fee means the unfair system just got a lot more unfair for you.

And if you find it a struggle to pay that fee (though there is talk of having a discounted fee for qualifying low-income people), one expert points out that the fee could actually provide an incentive for some to produce more trash, in order to get their money's worth. That unintended consequence could hurt the city's recycling aims, and even generate higher costs for the city to collect it.

Meanwhile, an increase in property taxes, while not ideal, has benefits over a flat fee. For one thing, property taxes are deductible, while a fee isn't, and seniors are eligible for a property-tax rebate.

This is one of the arguments that Councilman Frank DiCicco is making. DiCicco is leading a discussion in Council to push the administration to reconsider its options over a trash fee, and consider instead a hike in property tax, in the form of a millage-rate increase, to cover the shortfall.

There is one remarkable thing the trash fee could accomplish: It could have us begging for a property-tax hike instead.

But putting property taxes back on the table could result in a stronger political will to fix the BRT faster than two years. For encouragement on this score, officials should consider Zillow.com. This Web site estimates home values, and has managed to get detailed data and do value estimates (not appraisals) for 75 percent of single-family homes and condos in the entire country.

It took them less than four years. *