With a budget hearing set for Thursday, the Columbus City Council on Tuesday approved a resolution to raise garbage fees $2 a month, beginning Oct. 1.
But according to Chief Financial Officer Mike Bernsen, the increase may not be enough. The increase was intended to help offset a deficit of more than $200,000 in the Fiscal Year 2013 budget.
“Even by raising the fees, the city will still have a $97,000 loss in garbage and waste collections,” Bernsen said. “Our contract doesn’t cover leaf and branch pick-up and it is costing the city (additional money). We are increasing services by adding an additional boom truck. We’ve lost money in the past and we haven’t been covering our costs. The boom trucks are using 450 gallons of fuel a month and that’s a huge cost.”
Ward 3 Councilman Charlie Box, who suggested the increase during a budget planning session in August, said the city should stick with it’s twice-weekly garbage collection service.
“Our pick-up is twice a week,” Box said. “We could consider cutting it to once a week and not raising the fee, but I think no one wants to give that up.”
Barry Hinds challenged the council on the resolution during the citizens’ input portion of the meeting. Hinds told the council raising garbage rates was not the way to balance a budget.
“I feel like the council is trying to augment the general fund by raising fees in an improper manner,” said Hinds. “If the council needs to take care of the general fund, it needs to do so through a millage increase. The way you are doing it doesn’t meet the original language.”
A spokesperson for State Auditor Stacy Pickering’s office said the following regarding raising garbage fees to offset a budget deficit:
“The Mississippi Legislature also provided for restricted funding for the costs of operating the garbage and disposal systems … The source of the funding for municipal systems may be from the proceeds an ad valorem tax of up to four mills upon all taxable property within the municipality; and for county systems, the area within the county outside municipal corporate limits … Proceeds of ad valorem taxes and fees levied for garbage and disposal services may not be transferred to other funds (such as the General Fund); except as compensation for services provided to the garbage and disposal system … Garbage and disposal system revenues (ad valorem taxes and fees) must be budgeted and accounted for separately from other funds.”
If the council’s original plan was to use the rate hike to cover a general fund shortfall, something the state code rules improper in most cases, those intentions were scrapped when the city learned how much garbage collection actually costs.
City Attorney Jeff Turnage said he researched some sections of the Mississippi Code and made an advisement to the board.
“Last week, I pulled two sections of code,” Turnage said. “It was my advice that the city needed to do some good faith cost analysis. Mr. Bernsen did the math work. We are still losing money on garbage collections.”
A public hearing on the budget will be held Thursday at 5:30 at the Municipal Complex.
Jeff Clark was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.