Emanuel to ask residents to pay $9.50 monthly Chicago garbage bill?

[KamaAina]

http://wgntv.com/2015/09/18/best-guess-a-9-50-monthly-chicago-garbage-bill/

It appears Mayor Rahm Emanuel will ask Chicago residents to pay $9.50 a month to have their garbage hauled away.

Free garbage pickup would end under the mayor’s plan to help balance the city budget.

City hall won’t confirm the $9.50 figure, but one source within the Emanuel administration says the garbage fee definitely won’t be any higher than $11.00 a month.

It would be part of each homeowner’s bi-monthly water bill.

How very Republican of him.

[Renew Deal]

1. What's wrong with a sanitation levy?

[wordpix]

95. if you're paying taxes & pickup is on the city, it's double dipping to charge more

Then again, $11/mo. is nothing for this service.

[Pope Sweet Jesus]

2. Let's arrange to have all the garbage dumped at Rahm's mansion

since he's responsible for right-wing policies that has hurt Chicago.

[KamaAina]

4. Welcome to DU!

[alcibiades_mystery]

70. I drive by Rahm's house every day

It's not really a "mansion."

[forthemiddle]

3. I have never had free pickup.

I remember years ago hearing that cities actually picked up garbage for free, and I was astounded.
We pay $99.00 every three or four months.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. I never paid for it directly until I moved to CA.

In the East most older, densely populated areas included it in city services that are provided based on property tax levies. What he's proposing is a tax hike.

[hollysmom]

54. it's never free

It is part of your taxes. this is just another tax hike on residential real estate.

[MurrayDelph]

75. When I lived in LA

it was part of my utilities bill.

Now that I live in Oregon, it's a separate company/service that you subscribe to.

[Shrike47]

103. Indeed. In our part of Oregon, you choose your garbage hauler and pay for the service.

We pay plenty in property taxes, too.

[CTyankee]

84. well, if you call taxpayer support "free" then we have it here in New Haven.

Rest assured, it is picked up by city sanitation workers. And last time I looked it was part of our taxes.

Nothing is free.

[jonno99]

5. Hmmm...my city adds a garbage fee to my water bill - and they are Dems.

We have the choice of paying for a large or small waste container - priced accordingly (about the same as what Ram is proposing).

I've never considered the idea that garbage collection should be free.

I must be one of the ignorant oppressed...

[saturnsring]

55. i wasnt ever "free" you paid for it with taxes now what youre doing is paying for it twice

what happened to the money that WAS being used to pay for it> now you (by you I mean the people affected by this) are paying for it with tax money and thru fees

- where's the money dead fish?

[MohRokTah]

6. Chicago was the only place I ever lived with free garbage pickup

In the suburbs it's $14/month.

[Retrograde]

7. Cheaper than my city

We're at $43/month for one standard-sized can (although you can get a mini-can rate for $24) and there's no opting out as all utilities are on the same bill. OTOH, they'll pick up unlimited amounts of recyclables and compostables at no additional charge.

[Nye Bevan]

8. I pay over $50 per month.

$9.50 sounds pretty good to me.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. About half of what we pay in the Chicago suburbs.

~$55 per quarter.

I think water is still free in the city, isn't it?

[greatauntoftriplets]

20. I always got a water bill about the same time as the real estate tax bill.

Not sure if that's changed since I moved to the suburbs. Here, water and garbage are part of my monthly assessment.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

24. Is the water bill a flat rate? My vague recollection is that city houses don't have water meters.

[greatauntoftriplets]

25. I never knew how it was figured, but I didn't have a water meter.

[mopinko]

29. some do some dont.

i have a meter at my home, but not on my 2flat. most of my neighbors are unmetered.
nonetheless, the water bills are significant.

[Throd]

10. I pay for mine. I have never lived any place where it was a free service.

[former9thward]

47. That's because in no place is it free or ever has been.

Sanitation workers do not volunteer their services. Chicago is instituting a tax increase and just giving it a label rather than put it into the general property tax bill.

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. $11 a month here in SW Virginia. It's added to the water bill, so there's no escaping it.

But once a week, the truck comes by, scoops up whatever there is in the bin, and then drives away. Someone's gotta do it, and I don't have any real problem with the added charge. (But ask me again in January when there's snow on the ground and I'm trying to drag the damned thing up the slope to the street.)

[msongs]

12. charge by the pound. the biggest wasters pay more. do they have seperate for recyclables? nt

[Art_from_Ark]

76. My city in Japan has a good system for trash pick-up

We pay a nominal fee for trash bags (20-, 30- and 40-liters) to hold burnable garbage (papers and some plastics). Ten 20L bags sell for around the equivalent of 75 cents, and for me they last more than a month since trash pick-up for burnable garbage is twice a week and there are times when it takes me a full week to fill up one bag. This garbage is burned at a co-generator, which helps to produce electricity.

On other days, there are special collections for recyclables, like cans and glass and PET(E) bottles, as well as newspapers and cardboard boxes, and the city makes money by selling that stuff to recyclers. There are even signs at some collection sites reminding people that once recyclables are deposited at the collection site, they become the city's property, and unauthorized removal is considered to be theft.

Stuff that can't be burned or recycled is collected once every 2 weeks. If it's too big (like a bicycle, washing machine or chest of drawers), special arrangements have to be made to have it picked up (for a fee).

There are also trucks that drive through city streets that offer to carry away such "oversized garbage", as well as computers and other electronics for possible "urban mining". There is already technology for recovering gold from cell phones, and a special facilty at an abandoned mine can recover up to 10 kilograms, or 322 troy ounces, of gold, from 300,000 discarded cell phones.

[bobclark86]

13. In my town...

We pay by the bag, and have to hunt all over town to buy tags (because most stores get sold out too quickly). Tags are $2.50 each, so $10 a month would be an improvement for most people. I'd prefer a flat rate on the water bill, myself.

[MineralMan]

14. They get it free now?

Really. We pay a monthly fee for our trash hauling. I can't remember how much, but it's more than $9.50. I've never lived in a place with free garbage pickup. I can't see this as some sort of conservative thing.

[madinmaryland]

56. I assume it was paid for through local taxes, which have not been raised. No government

these days wants to raise taxes, so they pick the low hanging fruit and create fees to cover things like garbage, etc.

[ohheckyeah]

16. I don't pay for

garbage pickup since none is offered. My husband takes it to the dump. At least there's no charge to use the dump.

[passiveporcupine]

69. You are lucky

Our (transfer station) is not cheap. I think it's about $20 a yard. We do have garbage pickup, runs about $16 a month, paid by-monthly for one can. Recycling pickup is free. Large appliances are $10 each to drop off at the recycling center, even though other metal is free to drop off for recycling.

I can't recall ever living anywhere that trash pickup or dumping was free.

[ohheckyeah]

71. We also can go anytime

day or night.

No water or sewer bill either. We have a well and septic tank.

[Freethinker65]

17. I live in Chicagoland, Cook County suburb and...

Garbage pickup is a line item on our water bill. We get the option to pay an additional monthly fee for large toter cans, or need to buy a $3 sticker each time we put out our own 32 gallon can. Recycling is "free". It seems those with the larger monthly fee cans often tend to recycle less. We recycle everything we can, have a composter out back, and make lots of household stuff donations to charities, so average one garbage sticker every 4 to 6 weeks. While I do not enjoy buying garbage stickers, I think it has made me more conscious of the amount of waste I generate. Perhaps Chicago will move more to this kind of garbage pickup program?

I am not a big Rahm fan, but this seems far less upsetting than some of his other ideas.

[LittleBlue]

18. It's free?

Wow, I've always had to pay no matter where I lived.

I despise Rahm but this might be necessary. Chicago is a huge city, I'm surprised they could afford it.

[former9thward]

49. Its not free.

Sanitation workers get paid and their trucks cost money. The general property tax pays for it now and Rahm does not want to increase that general tax more than he already has. So he just gives it another label.

[NCTraveler]

19. I have no problem with this and it isn't really republican.

I use the word "really" because the costs are often regressive. Almost every municipality across this country charges its citizens for garbage pick up. Hint: it wasn't free before this was done either. I wish my garbage bill was 9.50/month. I can't for the life of me figure out why you are calling this republican unless it is the regressive aspect. Even then, there isn't enough information here to make that claim as assistance programs often come with changes like this, in turn making it actually progressive. No, I am not a fan of Rahm.

[valerief]

27. God help they tax rich people to make up the revenue loss. nt

[NCTraveler]

41. I fully agree with you and that is a part of my post.

This is direct taxation. Proper assistance programs will skew cost more toward the wealthy. Will Rahm aggressively fight for these assistance programs? I think so. I think he is one of the slimiest politicians out there. Instead of raising taxes he makes it direct pay. The wealthy don't give a shit about the ten dollar cost and somehow won't see it as a tax. Then Rahm busts ass with the legislature producing one or two assistance programs. Then those benefiting think the government is releasing their burden. The true politicians way of doing business.

Judging what I can from your comment I'm going to go out on a limb and say we agree to the original point. The best way to cover it all is to raise taxes on the rich. It has to happen. But that doesn't mean anything I previously said is republican or conservative. With assistance programs it can easily be viewed as progressive taxation.

Being a progressive doesn't mean chains are bounding us on how to move forward. Not saying you said it does. But there is more than one way to do things all while achieving a progressive outcome. You are right that there is a much better way to accomplish what they are doing.

[yeoman6987]

104. I don't Agee. Poor make garbage too

This is not republican. This is common sense and hopefully a way to have people think about how much garbage they toss.

[AngryAmish]

21. The city is broke.

As a Chicagoan, I want to pay our pensions.

[Rex]

22. How did the city go broke?

Curious.

[AngryAmish]

23. By not having enough revenue to match the expenses.

That is how you go broke.

[KamaAina]

28. And why have they not raised enough revenue?

[AngryAmish]

30. Taxes have not been raised in a long time

Yet more expenses were piled on.

[mopinko]

31. because some people think tax is a 4 letter word.

ritchie did everything he could to avoid property tax increases. but they are way lower than elsewhere in the county.
people still bitch, tho.

[Rex]

32. So what caused that to happen or do you not know?

If you don't know that is fine, it was just a question.

[AngryAmish]

33. Never seeing past the next election, mostly.

Papering over with borrowing and not paying into pensions.

[greatauntoftriplets]

34. Much of it done by the Daley administration, too, IMO.

Been going on a long time and one of the reasons I moved out of the city.

[Rex]

35. Thanks, so they drew from the well until it was bone dry.

I will never understand why sane adults believe you can spend and spend and spend and then borrow without worry about a payback date.

Seems like the word 'pension' is a dirty word like 'taxes' to those that lack the ability to be frugal.

[Throd]

44. Because children can't vote.

Pass the buck onto future generations. The ones that create the debacle will be retired or dead when the bill comes due so they don't care.

[AngryAmish]

61. Compound interest is not intuitive

Every notice why they pound it over your head over and over in Finance 204? It is not natural to understand.

Daley the Lessor had about a 105 iq. Finance 204 was past him.

[nadinbrzezinski]

66. And this is not unusual in largecities

here in San Diego we are looking at taxes on the ballot by 2016 (GASP I KNOW), and if the residents do not pass it, the infrastructure hole will just get epic

At 2.8 Billion it already is if you ask me.

[alcibiades_mystery]

72. Chicagoan here as well...we need to raise revenue

There are a lot of people who do not live in Chicago commenting on this thread because they hate Rahm or something. Chicago needs revenue. Certainly, we need to get back some of what the state takes from us for pensions and the like, but $9.50 a month added to the water bill is not going to break anyone. I mean, really.

Rahm's biggest argument against Chuy was that Chuy was going to raise property taxes. Most of us laughed at that: anyone who became mayor would raise property taxes, and even drastically. Because we need revenue.

[valerief]

26. Just what the privatizers want. Wonder how much they'll have to pay for the fire dept. nt

[Rex]

36. I'm worried that Chi town is going to go the way of Detroit. nt

nt

[valerief]

37. If we don't get Republicans out of our govt, it'll be every city in the nation. nt

[Rex]

38. Very depressing but the absolute truth, they are all self-destructing and taking us with them. nt

nt

[Throd]

45. Chicago and Detroit are Republican bastions.

Who knew?

[Travis_0004]

50. Chicago hasnt had a republican mayor in over 80 years

Their city council is 49 democrats, 1 republican.

I dont think you could find a republican with a seach warrant in the city of Chicago.

[jonno99]

57. Ummm...Ok - but sadly Ram is a dem...nt

[valerief]

67. Corporate dem, not a progressive.

[yeoman6987]

105. republicans? Can be blamed for a lot but not Detroit or Chicago

I doubt any republican lives in tjose two cities much less runs them.

[alcibiades_mystery]

73. The Department of Streets and Sanitation is not a private entity

Good luck trying to privatize Streets and Sanitation in Chicago.

[1939]

78. Nothing to do with privatization

Civil service sanitation can be paid for by taxes or by a dedicated fee.

If you contract out to Waste Management that can be paid for by taxes or by a dedicated fee.

[PoliticAverse]

79. I live in the state of New York, and the amount I pay for the fire department is specifically listed

and as item on my property taxes.

[valerief]

114. It should be part of property taxes, not a separate fee.

Property owners should pay for it, not residents.

[HereSince1628]

108. In Milw suburb fire protection fee is on water bill...it's $11 and change per month

If the fire department shows up to do anything at your property, you are billed according to what service they provide.
This is in a place where property tax on a modest home of ~1500 square feet is $7500.

[PotatoChip]

39. We (can) haul our own to the dump.

But we pay a guy who lives nearby to do it for us.

[hedgehog]

40. Garbage pickup comes out of taxes now, so it isn't "free"

This is a tax increase. The real question is, does this flat tax replace funding from a progressive tax?

[pintobean]

43. Exactly. I can't believe people are saying it's free.

[Shoulders of Giants]

83. This fee actually wouldn't be a flat tax, it would be a regressive tax.

A flat tax would be an equal percentage of income among the rich and poor. However, with this proposed fee for garbage, the rich and poor would pay the same amount monetarily. However, it would actually be a lower percentage of the rich's income, meaning its not flat but regressive. This is why in general, I'm opposed to replacing taxes with fees (aka regressive taxes). They are almost always a bigger burden on the poor.

[hedgehog]

85. Thank you for clarfying that. You are right that it's a greater burden on the poor.

$9.50 doesn't seem like much until you figure a lot of people make less than $10 an hour.

[doc03]

42. I have paid for garbage pickup for decades and

about 3 times that amount.

[Ilsa]

46. I pay more than that to have my garbage and recycleables

Hauled away. It's a separate bill from my water/sewage, though. But when I lived in town there was a garbage charge along with water and sewage.

[TheKentuckian]

48. In the pre metro days garbage was paid out of taxes in the city and privatized in the county

Probably still works the same but I haven't lived in the previous metro city since before the merger. There may be some charges I not aware of.

The 9.50 in and of its self is pretty damn cheap compared to privatized collection but it is a move toward fee for service which I think is a TeaPubliKlan set up.

[surrealAmerican]

51. Is this a TIF issue?

Is too much money being siphoned off from property taxes to even pay for garbage collection now?

[randys1]

52. Free? Should be but isnt most places. see how they get us used to paying for shit

that we shouldnt have to pay for.

Tax money should do it.

And water and healthcare and education and internet access.

[former9thward]

99. Cities can't print tax money.

It comes from the "we" that you talk about.

[WillowTree]

106. You think trash collection should be free? Really?

Then how do the guys who man the trucks get paid? Or the ones who maintain the trucks? Or the people who work in the offices that support those who actually do the collections? For that matter, how do the trucks get paid for? Or the gas that they run on?

Where on earth do people get the idea that anything is or should be "free"? Everything has to be paid for somehow.

"Tax money should do it." Well that's simple then. Just raise everyone's taxes by $114/year and then it'll be "free".

The cold, hard fact is that the City isn't collecting enough in taxes to continue to cover everything that has been financed by the current tax pool anymore, so the choices are to either charge a separate fee for refuse collection or raise the taxes by a commensurate amount to cover it. This isn't rocket science.

[Stellar]

53. I hate Emanuel but he is no worse than Mayor Daley...

since Daley sold our streets away from under us.

FAIL, Part One: Chicago's Parking Meter Lease Deal
How Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers on the parking meter lease deal

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2009/Content?oid=1098561

[Lil Missy]

58. Costs me more than that! I've never heard of it being free. They should pay up - it's a service.

[Gormy Cuss]

60. They are paying for it. It's one of the city services paid by property taxes. n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

74. Property taxes will go up, too

Yes, of course we pay Streets and Sanitation out of our property taxes. Now, we'll have a separate line item in the water bill for garbage pick up, and property taxes will go up anyway. Ultimately, we need revenue in Chicago, so that's life. We pay for our services. I'm not against paying my taxes.

[Gormy Cuss]

90. Disaggregating services allows city governments more flexibility in raising prices

and I suspect that's why he's proposing this, plus it becomes a fee rather than a tax so he can claim that he held down the tax increase.

Next step will be to privatize trash service.

[alcibiades_mystery]

97. Privatizing Streets and Sanitation will cause an all out war in Chicago

I don't doubt that people have it in mind, but Chicago Streets and Sanitation is perhaps the most embedded and powerful group of public sector workers in the whole country.

[Travis_0004]

80. Although condo users and apartments have had to pay for a while

In essence they were being double taxed. They paid property tax, then paid a condo fee that included trash collection.

I dont have a problem only charging the people who actually use the service. I would also assume 9.50 is still neing subsidized. I doubt they can actually provode trash pickup for that price.

[LeftOfWest]

107. "pay up"

ugh.

got it...

[LiberalArkie]

59. That's not bad. I pay $17.00 a month here in Arkansas.

[Omaha Steve]

62. We pay ours every month on our water bill

City of Bellevue Trash 13.42

The city is looking at charging those that put more trash out a higher amount in the near future.

[Snobblevitch]

63. I don't know what the problem is.

All of the places I have lived, there has been a sanitation fee on my utility bill.

My father is pissed because he owns a trailer in a park in Arizona and he has to pay a trash collection fee during the eight months they are not picking up any trash from his address.

[lonestarnot]

64. Wring every dollar out working folks bastard.

[nadinbrzezinski]

65. Many cities, both blue and red, charge for it

these people's initiatives are starting to go away faster and faster. and they are part of the early part of the 20th century.

[Logical]

68. This post makes no sense. I pay $17 a month. Like I do for...

Gas, water, sewer, electric, etc. FFS, this is not a GOP thing.

[blue neen]

77. We'd be happy to pay $9.50 a month.

Our bill is $61 a quarter. We've never had "free" garbage pickup in the 35 years we've been married.

There are legitimate reasons to criticize Rahm Emanuel. The issue in the OP isn't one of them.

[xmas74]

81. I wish mine was only $9.50 a month.

And to have it as part of the water bill would be even easier. I have one bill for trash to a private company, one for water to a private company and one for sewer to my city.

[Shoulders of Giants]

82. In general, I'm opposed to governments gaining money through fees instead of taxes.

Fees tend to be regressive as lower income people pay a higher percentage of their income towards the various fees. Its also a way for politicians to say they don't raise taxes, which is a dirty word for some reason.

[KamaAina]

87. You got it.

A workaround here might be to peg the fee to the assessed value of the home.

[Gormy Cuss]

91. Exactly.

If the service charge is a flat rate per household you can bet this is highly regressive.

[Waldorf]

86. I just looked at my water bill and the garbage part of the bill is around $13.

I don't think I've ever had free garbage pick-up.

This is in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

[REP]

88. Oh my god! Paying for a service is just wrong!!11

I would be delighted if my garbage bill were only $9.50 a month.

Paying a nominal amount for a city service is a not outrageous.

[pnwmom]

89. Sounds cheap to me. In our area, they are trying to encourage recycling,

so the garbage fee depends on how large a container they're picking up. The larger the container you require, the more you pay.

[WinkyDink]

92. Excuse me? I'd be THRILLED to have a mere $9.50/month payment. Not every municipality has PUBLIC

refuse collection, in case you didn't know.

[wordpix]

96. true, my town is charged by the ton and charges taxpayers accordingly

AND we pay big property tax

[yurbud]

93. Rahm is a corrupt asshole whether or not this particular action is justified

[jwirr]

94. Lucky them. Our's is $30 and month which includes

recycling.

A couple of the reasons for raising the costs is
that we no longer just find an old river bed to dump our waste in. Those old dumps are closed and cities have to find land that can be used without environmental problems to dump the waste. Imagine the size a dump for a city like Chicago would have to be.

Another thing is that many garbage companies provide the cans for both garbage and recycling free.

Another reason is that they now handle the toxic waste items that need special care. They hire people to do all these special jobs.

And in my case they how have rural garbage routes.

[alcibiades_mystery]

98. Chicago has recycling

We've had two bins for years now.

Chicago still needs to develop a separate compost pick up like New York has.

[jwirr]

100. Good to hear. I think the point to the garbage tax is

that we are all starting to do a better job of this than we used to.

[tabasco]

101. I pay almost that much in rural West Virginia

Not seeing the big deal paying for garbage removal, unless the other city taxes are prohibitively high.

[tritsofme]

102. In our Chicago suburb we pay about $20 a month. These complaints fall on deaf ears from me...

[Chan790]

109. I'm actually supportive of per-unit/item pricing for trash disposal...

as long as recycling and composting are free. I also think municipalities should offer for-charge collection of dangerous items (everything from kerosene to old electronics or refrigerators) for proper disposal.

I think it's a forward-thinking solution which acts to encourage better environmental stewardship and social behavior. It does a great deal to make people think about what they are throwing away and how it could be re-purposed or how their waste could be cut. Beyond the cost of garbage trucks and municipal employees, there are actual fiscal and environmental costs to trash. When you make people pay for trash, they try to generate less trash and some among them will pursue methods to actively-reduce their trash footprint. (For example, I make conscientious decisions to buy items with less packaging or compost-able packaging over non-compost packaging.)

I might go so far as to say it's both the responsible and the socially-progressive solution to a very real American trash problem.

[CTyankee]

110. The city has system for having special pickups for hazardous stuff...

I do think, tho, that in my city having both regular recyclable trash and garbage pickups be a municipal responsibility paid for by the citizenry. I think the city looks cleaner with it. But they do have some rules to follow and by and large this works OK. Otherwise, people would be dumping stuff in the middle of the night...

[craigmatic]

111. My trash bill is more than that.

[oneshooter]

112. Our area pays $5.50 a month, on the utilitys bill, we all have wells for water.

This includes 72gal trash can and a 40gal recycle bin. Trash is picked up twice a week, Wend. and Sat. recycle picked up on Wend..

[MineralMan]

113. In St. Paul, MN, trash collection is done by private

companies. Residents contract with their choice and the trucks come around once a week in residential areas. We have a wheelie bin and a recycling bin. Out they go on the curb for our Monday pickup. I think there are half a dozen companies that provide trash pickup and one for recycling.

We pay every other month, but I don't remember how much that bill is. My wife pays the bills online.

On the other hand, I'm having a roll off dumpster dropped in my driveway next week and we're doing an whole house clean out to get rid of accumulated crap. A 20 cubic yard dumpster and drop off and pickup will cost us about $400. It's well worth the cost, though. I no longer have a pickup or trailer, and there are no public landfills anywhere near the city, so even if I did, I'd have to pay to dump the stuff at a transfer station, at about the same cost.

Trash is always an issue. It costs plenty to get rid of trash. People have to pay for those services, one way or another.