Opinion ID: 1700088
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: garbage

Text: While not a major item, this illustrates the thinking of the managers and the Board. No charge was made for garbage collection until February, 1976, ten years after the first lots were sold. At that time a charge of $2.00 per month for residential and $20 per month for commercial was instituted. The cost for garbage collection to the District was estimated by the Board to be $29,000 per year and it was also estimated that the monthly charges would bring in $20,000 a year. When asked why the lessees were not paying the full $29,000, the manager stated that some of the cost was attributable to the public areas. No attempt was made to determine (a) the true cost to the District for garbage collection, or (b) the actual cost to the District for rendering garbage service to the lessees. [13] More interesting, in 1980, the District contracted with a private firm to collect all garbage at $3.39 per residence. The contract with the waste management firm did not cover all expenses the District had in connection with garbage collection, however, because the District, not the private firm, had to collect from the lessees. Therefore, there was an added administrative and incidental costs entailed in having to collect monthly from a thousand or so customers. Manifestly, some charge should have been added to the $3.39 to take care of this extra cost to the District. One member of the Board at its June 13, 1980, meeting made the motion to increase the monthly charge from $2.00 to $3.50, presumably to look after the District's interest, and taxpayers' interest. This motion died for lack of a second. The general manager suggested the District charge the lessees $3.00 per month (a loss of $.39 per month). The Board finally decided to charge $3.30 per customer per month, nine cents per customer less than what the District was paying the waste management firm.