How about a Newspaper User's Fee?
Tommorrow night the Concord City Council will review the General Services Budget in our yearly quest to pass a fair budget that provides services to the taxpayers while raising taxes as little as possible.
The General Services budget holds all the costs for the maintaniance of our streets, the upkeep of all the city's building and parks, the cemeteries, the airport, the areana, the golf course and the solid waste removal and collection. We run the airport, the areana, and the gold course almost exclusively with what are called enterprise funds. In the language of non-government types that means they are self funding through user's fees. In other words the people that use them pay for them and they get very little or no subsidy from the taxpayers.
User's fees are utilized to fund a lot of areas in city government. For instance CCTV, channels 6, 17, and 22 that you receive if you subscribe to cable are funded thru a cable franchise fee. So when you pay your monthly cable bill you pay to have government access and see the city coucnil, planning and zoning boards, the school board and other shows you see on Channel 22 such as my dog Vito's show about pets.
Most of the programs that are offered by our Recreation Department are helped by user's fees paid by the participants. And we all pay separate water and sewer bills if we are on city water and sewer these services are paid for by the users not the entire taxpaying public.
What would happen if the city charged the Concord Monitor and any other Newpaper that sells subsrciptions in the city a franchise fee. Say 5% like the cable tv fee and then the city used that money toward the collection and disposal of solid waste? Seems like a fair way to assess the Monitor and other newspapers for what they contribute to the waste stream in Concord.
The Monitor's editorial writers have often spoken in favor of taxpayers paying for their trash by the bag in addition to what they pay in property taxes. The theory is this will force people to recyle and throw less into the incinerator and land fill. So it seems logical that the Monitor should be willing to pay a user's fee for their disposal of newspaper. Even though the newspaper can be recycled that still is at a cost to the city.
Ask yourself how much of your biweekly recyable bin is filled with old Concord Monitors? Is it at least 5%? I am sure this idea will not pick up support amoung the State's Newpapers and Publishers but isn't it worth a little thought?
