Whatever they are calling it, we don’t want it.
The latest discussion at city hall involving residential waste disposal provides a good measure of just how out-of-touch the marble palace bureaucrats are from the average working tax payer.
It appears that, in the minds of the city bean-counters, a $1 billion annual budget is not enough to cover the most basic of governmental services and so they continually look for new streams of income when Augusta’s budget is already almost as large as Savannah, Macon and Athens/Clark Counties combined.
Even though it would appear the city of Augusta is awash in tax payer funding as well as “found money” in the form of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, the bureaucrats claim they are facing a $903,000 shortfall in the coming year.
When the bureaucrats realize another tax hike might cause a revolt, they shamelessly claim, “this new tax is not a tax, it’s a fee.”
If we cast the misleading semantics aside, this latest discussion on raising garbage “fees” in all reality is nothing more than governmental price gouging at its most cynical.
Augusta has inked a new extension on its contract with Coastal Waste and Recycling, giving the commission the perfect opportunity to increase the “fees” associated with a service they do not provide but farm out.
The city already makes $54.68 of pure profit per household each month through its “garbage fee,” and now they are considering raising the fee so they may collect $174.68 per house each month for not lifting a finger.
For years, eco-conscious Augustans thought they were being environmentally friendly by separating trash and recyclables into different bins, only to find out the recycling bins were being dumped into the landfill along with the rest of the trash and now they want people to pay extra for this non-service.
The city has imposed a “Stormwater Fee” without any accounting on where that money has been spent for the past decade. The money certainly has not gone towards building new infrastructure to ease flooding and they are attempting this new “bait and switch” by claiming the increased fees on garbage pick-up will be applied to blight removal.
Yeah, right.
What the bureaucrats and politicians really hope is that people will not pay attention since the “garbage fee” is included in the ad valorem taxes sent out each year and pay the fee as part of their continued punishment for owning property in Augusta/Richmond County.
We urge all tax payers to take a moment and send an email to their commissioner and super district commissioner and demand an end to this “taxation without reciprocation.”
