The city of Springfield’s trash-pickup fee might be roundly despised by the city’s residents, but it’s certainly proven useful to its politicians.
In 2006, the Finance Control Board imposed a $90 annual trash fee, in an attempt to plug up shortfalls in the city budget. The move infuriated many residents, who for years had enjoyed “free” curbside pick-up (“free,” of course, meaning covered under existing taxes, rather than a separate fee). And angry voters can be a godsend to ambitious politicians—at least, if they play their cards right.
State Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera led the charge against the trash fee—she likened it to “taxation without representation”—filing a lawsuit that attempted to kill the fee, which resulted in its implementation being postponed by a year. Last year, Coakley-Rivera threatened to hold up a financial relief bill for the city unless it included her demand that the trash fee be abolished by fiscal 2012. That provision was included in the bill, although almost immediately questions were raised about its legal validity. Meanwhile, City Councilor Jimmy Ferrera and his then-colleague Bud Williams went after a specific angle of the fee program: the seizure of city-provided trash barrels from people who failed to pay their bills; the councilors argued, unsuccessfully, that the seizures would result in increased illegal dumping.
And, perhaps most infamously, Domenic Sarno’s 2007 campaign for mayor included a call to abolish the fee, which was established under Mayor Charlie Ryan. Not long after defeating Ryan, Sarno announced that he’d changed his mind, and decided the city needed the trash-fee revenue after all.
With the 2011 election already on the horizon, the trash fee is, once again, back in political play, this time, courtesy of City Council President (and presumed 2011 mayoral candidate) Jose Tosado. Last week, Tosado took up the anti-fee mantle, announcing plans to bring a vote before the Council on Dec. 6 to rescind the fee—and signaling that, once again, the controversial garbage fee may play a significant role in the next mayoral race.
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Like Sarno, Tosado’s position on the trash fee has changed, albeit in the opposite direction: he initially voted in favor of the fee as a member of the Control Board (a position he held as president of the Council at the time).
Tosado told the Advocate last week that, unpopular as that decision was, it was the right thing to do at the time, given the city’s abysmal financial shape. (When the state Legislature created the Control Board in 2004, the city faced a deficit of about $40 million.)
“I wasn’t thinking about politics. I was thinking about what was best for the city. So I voted for it, and I stand by that vote,” Tosado said.
“Someone might criticize me, that I was one of the ones on the Control Board [that instituted the fee],” he added. “That’s fine; I’ll take my criticism.”
Tosado has his own criticisms to offer as well—specifically, of Sarno’s flip-flop on the issue. Tosado said he’ll give Sarno the benefit of the doubt that his campaign-trail pledge to rescind the trash fee was sincere, and not just a ploy to win over angry voters, as some critics contend. Nonetheless, Tosado said, if the candidate Sarno really thought the city could afford to kill the fee at the time, and only realized otherwise after he took office and was advised by City Hall financial staffers, “that tells me that he didn’t do his homework, didn’t know about the financial condition of the city. … I think it was shooting from his hip, because he had not done his homework.”
In an interview last week with the Springfield Republican, Sarno urged caution before eliminating the trash fee, which has helped offset rising costs of municipal trash disposal. Before the fee is eliminated, the mayor told reporter Peter Goonan, the city needs a plan to make up for that loss of revenue, which has ranged from about $3.5 million and $4 million a year.
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Tosado maintains the money to offset the trash fee is there, thanks to surplus funds the city has built up during its years of fiscal recovery. City Hall recently announced that Springfield has a budget surplus of about $1 million, and expects the municipal reserve fund to hit $44 million by the end of the current fiscal year.
(Sarno, meanwhile, has his own voter-friendly plans for using some of that money: reducing the property tax levy, and lowering resident’s tax bills. That plan has met with some exasperation from city councilors—Tosado among them—who point out that they pushed for tax relief measures during last summer’s budget process, only to be told by the administration that such a move would be fiscally imprudent.)
Tosado said he was inspired to take up the trash fee issue in part because of questions about the validity of Coakley-Rivera’s efforts last year to kill the fee through the financial relief bill. Among the problems with that bill: its language cited the incorrect Control Board order.
Since its initial implementation in 2007, the trash fee has been reduced, from $90 the first year, to $80 in fiscal 2010, to $75 in fiscal 2011. (Certain residents can qualify for a 25 percent reduction, including disabled veterans, the blind, and people whose income falls below the federal poverty level.)
With many residents still wrongly expecting the fee to end after 2012, and with the city posting budget surpluses, now is the time for officials to offer relief from the trash fee, Tosado said. “I think the taxpayers deserve this break, and we can afford it—that’s the big thing,” he said. (And, in what sounded a bit like an early stump speech, Tosado—an area director for the state Department of Mental Health—added that he’s managed “millions of dollars” professionally, and understands that if there’s a surplus in one area, it can be used to offset a need in another.)
Tim Rooke, chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee, urges caution on the matter of the trash fee. “If we’re going to do something like this, let’s get all the financial information,” he said. “If we’re going to get rid of it—as I counseled Domenic when he was a candidate—that’s great”—but only if the city can identify where the lost revenue will be made up.
In his opinion, Rooke added, the trash fee should actually be increasing, to keep up with the increasing cost of trash collection. As it stands, Rooke noted, residents’ fees only cover a portion of the city’s total costs. The recent reductions to the fee, he added, amount to a “smoke and mirrors” tactic; while residents’ trash bills might drop $5 or $10, they’re still covering the full cost of the service through other taxes.
Noting the political predicament created for Sarno by his changed position on the fee, Rooke added, “That’s a political liability for him, but it shouldn’t become a financial liability for the city.”
Tosado, meanwhile, maintains that the city’s financial team—which, he noted, is well staffed, and well paid—should be able to find a funding source to cover the loss of a trash fee. “Let them find the money,” he said. “They should have been working on this a long time ago.”
