City Council Holds Line: Approves 21% Increase In Garbage Tax vs. Staff Proposed 25%
December 17, 2008 2 Comments
Could City Budget Problems Be Solved By Matching Public Employee Pay To Private Sector?
The National Taxpayer’s Union has a piece on their website:
Study: State Budget Problems Could Be Solved by Matching Public Employee Pay to Private Sector
What effect would matching public employee pay to the private sector have in Sunnyside? Would Washington State be facing a $5 billion+ budget gap this year?
I listened to the City Council meeting from December 16th on the City’s website. Council tamped down the proposed 25% increase in the garbage tax to a mere 21%. To be fair, this increase was coming from the contractor, and Yakima County dumping fees. Council put the brakes on, passing the more modest increase. My thanks go out to Council Members Gehlen, Epps, Stone, and Hancock for voting to keep the increase below 25%. Voting for the full increase were Gant and Garcia. Restucci was absent.
In this struggling economy, resistance to increases must be stepped up.
The downside to this, is that the reserves in the garbage fund will be low. Should a price shock in fuel prices come in the next year, Council may have to intervene to raise the tax before the next budget is set. Watching Bloomberg this morning, an oil analyst was predicting $30-40 a barrel for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, we will have some stable fuel costs and additional increases won’t be necessary. In the event reserves are not adequate, adjustments can be made as needed. Council wisely chose to hold off on additional increases right now.
One topic brought up at the meeting, but did not receive enough attention in my opinion, is that garbage and utility taxes are siphoned off into the general fund. One Council Member suggested using the total funds from garbage tax collection to pay for garbage. That way, the garbage tax could fund the garbage reserve fund! Whoa! That was mind numbing. Of course, that would require cuts at City Hall, where pay raises have already been approved, so Council did not revisit the total budget for the year.
We should be happy the full potential of tax increases was not realized. However, more cuts can be made, and efficiencies gained. Bringing public sector pay to parity with private sector pay would be one way to do it.
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I am so happy to see Hancock, Stone, and Stone vote to hold the rate down. I was shocked to see Epps vote for it. Epps is a very liberal person to vote down a tax raise.
It seems to me that Hancock and Epps are like a shorted out electric fencer. They jump all over the place depending what mood they’ re in at the moment.
Gehlen to me seems to be the one person on the council that studies the issues in depth and IS watching out for the taxpayer in Sunnyside.
There are so many special interest individuals in this town. Never in the interest of Sunnyside. Unless there is something in it for themselves. Restucci is the worse culprit at doing such a thing. Friendship to him is more important than doing the right thing. Says he came from Connecticut. He acts more like a chicagoan !
Don,
Recently Council Members Stone and Hancock have been the main ones opposed to increases in the City Budget. On this issue, Epps and Gehlen saw the merits of the argument against an even larger increase than what we just received. To their credit, these four held the line, keeping the increase from being larger.
I don’t know why Restucci was absent from this meeting, however, he did vote for the full increase at the last Council Meeting.