Garbage service savings should be passed on to residents
To the editor:
Open letter the Mayor and Council
At Monday night’s Council Meeting there was discussion and a vote on changing companies for a garbage collection ostensibly saving the city some $800,000!
Have fun pushing those 95 gallons cans around! Make room in your garage for them as they are gigantic in size and weigh a ton! I looked up the definition of the word “garage” and it tells me it is for the storage of vehicles!
The actual savings to residents is $1 a month or $12 a year. Some on council equated this to a savings or a benefit to the city itself wherein this money would now be available for other purposes. Let me make this very clear, it is not! It is an assessment for a single purpose only!
Many years ago the city made arrangements with our current garbage collector to have the yearly fee for garbage collection added as an assessment on our tax bill instead of the residents being billed every three months and in place of an increase for garage collection. This is the same thing that is done with assessments for water and sewer and storm water!
It is a separate listing on your tax bill at the bottom under non-ad valorem and is not part of the ad valorem taxes in any shape or form!
The city merely acts as a conduit for the collection of this fee. This savings that is touted as some $800,000 dollars is not available for the city to pay down debt or spend on other projects! They merely collect the money from the residents and pay that exact amount of money to the garbage collector.
Lynn Rosko
Cape Coral