One thing you must remember about both life and government is, with few exceptions, you can't get something for nothing. It may take awhile to dig out the true cost of any program, but if you learn that principle, it will aid you in your decision-making processes.
Government is very good in two areas; the first is hiding the true cost and the second is deferring costs so that they appear to vanish. Hiding the true cost includes the imposing hidden taxes; deferring costs includes transferring costs to the next generation - and so it is with city cable and county trash.
Hollister's city manager recently detailed the things the city was getting "free" from the cable franchisee. He went so far as to say the freebies were worth thousands of dollars a month. Do you believe that he or the council members believe that these are free? Of course not, the freebies are being paid for by the city cable users - it's part of the franchise fee. The term franchise fee is less offensive than the word tax.
Those free benefits are thinly disguised bribes. The cable company collects from the users and exchanges part of it into freebies for the city. What does the cable company get in return? They get friendly treatment, few hassles from the city and more importantly, no resistance to rate increases. The city has been a lapdog; it's 'Corruption 101' camouflaged to look like a benefit; moreover, they are paying those bribes with your money.
Now a divorce is in the making; the cable company wants to obtain a statewide franchise and leave us. The city's response was to hire an outside agency with your tax money to determine if the cable company has been fulfilling its obligations. One might ask why the city has a sudden interest in whether we are being cheated; they never cared before. The answer speaks for itself; the lapdog has been kicked. Next time the city takes something free, they'd better look at the cost.
On the county level, it appears as if the board of supervisors is going to use trick number two to handle an unplanned obligation at the John Smith landfill. Between additional work and higher fuel costs, the landfill has picked up a bill for $200,000. Although these charges may be legitimate, how they showed up before we decided how we would pay for them is a matter for another column; the problem right now is to come up with the money.
Rather than "pay-as-you-go," the board is leaning towards "play-now-pay-later" laying this cost on to all the future taxpayers in the county rather than on the users of the landfill where it belongs. That's no way to either reduce waste or pay our bills.
To pay the bill right now would require the board to raise the rates on bulk landfill waste $12 a ton - a little over a half-cent a pound. However, they are afraid that we will become 'non-competitive' with other landfills for customers, especially from outside the county. The second option is to pay it from reserves. The money is there, but the board has other plans for it.
The third option, the one the board is leaning to, is to increase the tonnage allowed in the landfill by 60 tons a day (3 truckloads). However, as pointed out in the staff report, the bill will come due eventually and sooner, rather than later.
The landfill has approximately 20 years life remaining at the current use rate. By law, when 15 years of life are remaining we mist have another plan. Allowing an additional 60 tons a day will shorten the life of the landfill by three years - 15 percent. Instead of five years grace period as we have now, we will be forced to implement the alternate disposal plan in four years, three months and every county taxpayer will be affected, not just those disposing of bulk waste. That's the worse possible answer.
The board should face the situation and either raise the rates or use reserves or do a little of both. Passing someone else's trash bill to our kids is a bad idea.
Marty Richman Got a question or a comment? Send us an email.
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