Tax on Kent garbage haulers could pay for roadwork; customers’ bills could climb

A new franchise fee or tax on garbage haulers might be a method the Kent City Council could use to help pay for city street maintenance.

There are no specific proposals yet in front of the Council, but City Public Works Director Tim LaPorte discussed the idea of adding a garbage hauler tax or fee in 2011 at an informational Council workshop Jan. 19 on transportation funding.

Garbage companies, which contract with the city, would then add the cost of the fee on to customers’ bills. Customers currently pay a 7.8 percent city utility tax on garbage collection and disposal services. That tax money goes into the city’s general fund.

“We do not require a solid-waste utility to pay for streets, so we are subsidizing them,” LaPorte said during his presentation to the Council. “Every time a garbage truck stops it causes the pavement to rattle. That’s why we came up with the idea and it has been used in other jurisdictions (in Tacoma and Bothell).”

LaPorte said heavy garbage and recycling trucks can ruin city streets.

“A solid-waste utility needs a truck to pick up (garbage and recycling) and it will do more damage than 8,000 vehicles (cars),” LaPorte said.

City officials are in the process of selecting a garbage hauler later this year under a new contract. The city’s current contracts with Allied Waste and Waste Management expire on March 31, 2011. Under separate contracts with the city, Allied Waste currently provides residential garbage service while Waste Management serves commercial customers.

“We can’t prepare a contract until we select a vendor,” LaPorte said. “After that, we could include this (new fee). The solid waste utility is not paying for itself. The fairest way to do this, if the Council wants, is we could implement it with the new contract.”

City officials have used local improvement districts (LIDs), where impacted property owners pay a portion of the cost, to fund new streets. But if a local improvement district was formed to build a street, another one cannot be formed for street maintenance, LaPorte said.

State and federal money also is tougher for the city to get because of cutbacks, leaving the city in search of new funding options.

Councilman Ron Harmon asked city staff to look into a proposal for a voter-approved, general-obligation bond as a method to pay for street maintenance. Harmon said residents in the city of Auburn passed a bond about four years ago to pay for specific street projects.

“I want to know what kind of revenue we’re looking at from a general obligation bond that would be limited to street overlay work so voters would know where the money would go,” Harmon said.

The Council also requested specific numbers about how much revenue a garbage tax could bring in and how much it would cost customers.

The Council last year at a workshop discussed a transportation impact fee on developers of new commercial buildings and homes to help fund city street projects. But that fee discussion ended after strong opposition from developers before city staff formed any specific proposal for a Council vote.

LaPorte told the Council that the city has just $14,000 left in its 2010 budget to fix potholes.

“We have a very good street crew of six,” LaPorte said. “But they have one problem. They are running out of bullets.”

The Council must now decide whether a proposal to add a garbage hauler fee to pay for street maintenance should go before the Council’s Public Works Committee and eventually to the full Council for approval.

“I think it’s very important that as policy makers you look at revenues to maintain roads,” Kent Mayor Suzette Cooke said to the Council at the workshop. “Maybe you look at it before the Public Works Committee. But the timeline has to be soon.”