In the almost quarter-century since Leflore County started house-to-house garbage collection, it has been a great success in all ways but one: Getting people to pay for the service.
This past week, this newspaper reported that nearly 2,500 of the county’s residential customers — two-thirds of the total — are at least $200 behind on their garbage bills. Twenty-four of the biggest scofflaws owe at least $2,000, meaning that they or the household for which they are listed may not have paid a single garbage bill ever.
For just those deadbeats, the total delinquency is $1.2 million. Add in those who are behind but less than two years behind, and that’s at least tens of thousands of dollars more.
It raises the question of whether the fee-paid system will ever work well given the lack of leverage the county seems to have in compelling people to pay. The history is not encouraging.
When the county in 1995 started house-to-house collection, a marked improvement from the large unsightly bins that previously were used for garbage disposal, it contracted out with a private firm to handle it. That didn’t last, in large part because the private firm said it had to jack up its rates about 40 percent to offset the losses from non-paying customers.
In 1997, with the strong encouragement of Sam Abraham, who had been elected chancery clerk about a year earlier, the county took over the responsibility of garbage collection. Over time it even cut the rates. When adjusted for inflation, the $8.50 per month the county presently charges is almost 50 percent less than what it was charging in the first year of county-operated collection.
County residents are getting a great deal. Greenwood charges $20 a month for the same once-a-week collection and Carroll County $15.
Until recently, according to Abraham, who is now a supervisor for District 1, the modest garbage fees were more than enough to cover the costs of pick-up and disposal, but the high delinquency rate is starting to be felt. Costs are exceeding revenue, and the surpluses that had built up in the garbage fund are eroding. If that’s not reversed soon, the rates will have to go up, or the county will have to subsidize garbage collection from its general fund, something Abraham says it hasn’t had to do in at least 15 years.
His answer is to hire a collection agency to go after the past-due customers and to let it tack on to the customers’ bills the 25 percent or so charge for its trouble. The supervisors looked at such an arrangement a couple of years ago but backed off because the majority didn’t want to pass on to residents the collection agency’s fee, feeling they couldn’t afford it.
It’s questionable, though, whether a collection agency will have much luck, even if the county can find one interested in chasing after so many small accounts.
The problem the county has is there’s not much muscle at its disposal to collect these bills. Unlike Greenwood, which uses Greenwood Utilities to collect the garbage fee and can have your water and electricity turned off if you don’t pay, the county’s only real threat is to hold a deadbeat’s car tag. Given the high percentage of delinquent accounts, obviously that’s not been a very effective stick.
Another idea, and one already used in some counties, is to scrap the fee-paid system and instead tack the cost of solid waste disposal onto the property taxes of those who own homes or have businesses where the garbage is collected.
Even though landlords could pass on the cost of the tax increase to their renters, Abraham doesn’t like the idea because it would result in those with more taxable property — businesses, farmers and wealthy homeowners — subsidizing those toward the bottom of the income ladder.
Although he has a point about fairness, the cost of a lot of government operations are spread around. People who live in densely populated residential neighborhoods subsidize the cost of keeping up roads worn out by heavy farm equipment in thinly populated areas. Families that have no children in the public schools pay taxes to educate those who do.
Besides, presently those who pay the garbage fees are already subsidizing those who don’t. They are going to be subsidizing them even more if the rates go up.
The county has to get the money somehow. It seems a lot more efficient to get it once a year rather than $8 or $9 at a time.
• Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
