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City Needs Revenue From Garbage Tax, Having Trouble Implementing Collection System
posted (January 4, 2013)
And the City Council is the one waiting on BWSL to conclude negotiation so that the utility can attach the residential garbage tax to the water bills of city residents. Sounds like a good plan on paper, but the devil is in the details - and while working those out, the mayor says negotiations have stalled. It's bad news for City Hall because its main sources of revenue, the head tax and the government subvention now go to the Central Bank to service the municipal bond. It needs the revenue from the garbage tax as revenue replacement, but setting up collection may be difficult. The mayor discussed it today:..

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"We are still not finalized with BWSL. I had expected that we would have been much advance in terms of our discussions with putting that in place. It's been stalled and this is one of those things that you had ask me about in terms of wanting to push aggressively ahead but it doesn't work as planned. We wanted to ensure that we were agreed before the close of the year, we are beyond the year because these bills have to go out this month in terms of our projection. We have to start collecting this fee by latest February and that is our time table."

"I hope that those discussions will be concluded within a matter of days. If they are not concluded with a matter of days then this would be something where we would have to take a new direction. The council itself would have to collect the fee. We didn't want to do that because our systems are not design for the collection of a fee like that - a monthly fee. The municipal bond itself is protected because the repayments for that are from our subvention funds. The residential garbage fee was supposed to be revenue replacement. The revenue replacement could be default for a certain period of time but we will need that money in terms of running our operations or we will be in a severe financial crunch."

If a suitable arrangement cannot be reached in the next few weeks - the council will have to set up its own collection system.

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