Why is county scrambling to avoid a $14-a-year fee hike?

The county faces ultra-tight deadlines to put waste collection fees on next year’s tax bills because of a deadlock over a maximum $14 increase. That’s not $14 a load, or a week, or a month. It’s $14 a year, tops. That’s it. We face a $14 crisis.

What Miami-Dade commissioners turned down in three successive votes was charging $4 to $14 more per customer yearly for solid waste service. The rise would be 2% more per customer than last year, matching federal cost of living calculations.

In this era, a 2% hike in almost anything would be at least a minor victory. Look at a fast-food restaurant menu and figure out how much the so-called value meal price rose in a year. Well above 2%.

So why are seven of 13 sensible commissioners digging in their heels and saying they won’t burden taxpayers with such a large rise as the 2% that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava recommended? 

We can’t read their minds, but other than the possibility that they’re pandering to voters, it’s certainly a reversal from last year’s debate over garbage fees.

Last year, with most garbage collection customers then paying $547 yearly, the mayor recommended no increase at all to give “relief to residents given the increased cost of living” and to then borrow from another county fund to make up the difference between real costs of solid waste efforts and a below-cost charge to customers. 

The mayor’s second option last year – the one she didn’t recommend – was to raise rates $114 (not $14) to $661 per household to cover all actual expenses. Commissioners, however, rejected both of her options and raised that top rate even more, to $697 – a jump of more than 21% that drew voter complaints.

This year, those commissioners again rejected the mayor’s offering and are saying a 2% rise is too high. 

Other commissioners will probably echo Raquel Regalado in calling garbage operating costs too high to begin with. “I don’t think that just because the department is spending more money we automatically have to pass that on to our ratepayers,” she told commissioners this month.

Maybe not. But wouldn’t it make far more sense to cut solid waste spending before giving the users a break rather than after? If not, the county will again end up borrowing and burdening the future to repay the true cost of collecting your garbage and mine.

We shouldn’t expect the county to subsidize us. And, in fact, it doesn’t – we’ll just pay more taxes to support county operations, whether it’s on the solid waste line of our tax bill or somewhere else. There is no free lunch.

The policy decision is whether the county should pay as it goes or pile it onto backs of future taxpayers. As Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III told the commission, the reason waste fees rose 21% in one year was that the commission for years had left charges the same and let debt build up. Last year the chickens came home to roost.

If the county this year doesn’t collect enough to cover garbage costs, it will again build debt at the same time it’s searching for ways to replace an incinerator that closed more than two years ago, leaving the county without a permanent place to park more than half its waste. How many crises should the solid waste system face simultaneously?

Commissioners voted last year to raise the solid waste fee every future year on par with the cost of living. That’s what the mayor presented this month. But now commissioners have reversed course and abandoned that wise policy – at least for now.

Ms. Regalado is correct that waste collection customers should pay based on what dealing with each of them costs the county rather than one size garbage bag fits all. But that revolution in service can’t come in time to reach the Aug. 24 tax notices that will set maximum tax and fee bills for the year ahead. That plan will demand long, careful study and whole new county operating methods. 

If we began a solid waste revolution today, it would take the county years – don’t forget, the county started work in 2016 on the Smart Plan for six rapid transit lines, yet exactly none of them is ready to roll. Government does not move at the speed of business.

So now the county is in panic mode to pass a garbage rate. It has to set some rate, because the old one expires every year and the county can’t live a full year without collecting a penny for garbage hauling from 354,000 customers.

It doesn’t have to be panic, of course. Just raise the rate $14 this year and figure out a better system in the future.

How pennywise and pound foolish can we be?