Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach has been encouraging residents to officially oppose a 22 percent increase to garbage rates that the council is set to vote on tonight.
“I’m not only encouraging them, I’m telling them how to do it,” Feierbach said regarding Proposition 218 notifications sent out to Belmont residents.
The notifications allow the public to protest the increase, needing a majority to keep the rates from going up.
Feierbach wants to see the increase be below 15 percent.
“I’m looking for as low as I can get it. I’m not going to vote for the 22 percent,” she told the Daily Journal yesterday.
She proposes a variety of ways to get the rate increase lower, including using one-time funds set aside to pay off an old debt to Allied Waste, the company that formerly provided garbage service to most cities on the Peninsula through the South Bayside Waste Management Authority until Recology was awarded a contract in 2010.
Allied contends Belmont owes it $1.1 million that must be paid by September 2012. Belmont has about $600,000 set aside to pay off that debt, although Feierbach said at least a portion of the $600,000 can be used to lessen the burden on residential ratepayers.
Councilman Warren Lieberman, however, thinks that is a bad idea.
In fact, he said, it is the council’s fault Belmont residents are facing such an increase and not Recology’s.
“There is an overwhelming misperception that Recology will get a 22 percent increase. That is not the case. They will actually only be getting about a 1 percent increase in revenue,” Lieberman said.
The rest of the increase is needed to pay Recology what Belmont owes it based on a rate structure that Lieberman calls “too progressive.”
The council approved a rate structure that guaranteed Recology $5.9 million for 2011 but because Belmont residents migrated to smaller cans, the city only raised about $5.1 million from its commercial and residential ratepayers for the year, Lieberman said.
About 14 percent of the proposed increase is to cover about $730,000 in losses that Recology suffered related to customers migrating to smaller cans at a greater rate than was expected.
Recology also estimates it needs to add about $365,000 in cost related to Belmont residents migrating to smaller cans in the next two years.
That attributes about 7 percent of Recology’s requested 22.26 percent increase for 2012 as it agreed to spread those charges over a two-year period.
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Submitted by Jim Alex
2 comments:
So does Belmont's council have the brains to demand an audit of the raw data from Recology?
Not the spoon-fed crap they gave Pacifica, for example, which oddly enough confirms everything their asking for.
No, I'm talking about a real audit of the books.
Too difficult; too much work.
At least Belmont's mayor makes a pretense of advocating for the ratepayer; here in Pacifica we have no one in power who gives a rat's a@@ about the lowly ratepayer.
Whenever Recology takes over the garbage contract for a city, it's always the same thing. Rates soar, yet Recology always says it's not their fault.
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