If Maumelle aldermen decide to begin eliminating an unpopular community service fee charged to the city's residences, they also will need to figure how to make up the lost revenue in the city budget, Mayor Mike Watson said.
The City Council is scheduled to vote at its 6 p.m. meeting Monday about whether to reduce the $6 monthly fee for residences by $1 per month beginning Jan. 1, until the fee is eliminated. The fee is charged quarterly -- $18 per quarter -- on household trash collection bills to help fund police and fire protection.
"Good question," Watson said Thursday when asked how the revenue loss of $81,000 next year would be made up in the city budget, as well as the $486,000 annually when the fee is completely gone by 2021. "That's what I keep asking [the aldermen]. There's no replacement revenue for it."
Alderman Steve Mosley, one of four sponsors of the ordinance, said at a recent City Council meeting that the change wouldn't lead to any reductions in city funding for its fire and police departments.
The reduction in the fee would affect only households that produce the largest portion of the $725,000 in revenue from the fees that the city budgeted to receive this year, Watson said. The fee would remain for commercial and industrial bills based on square footage of the business. Maumelle's general fund budget is $11.4 million.
The community service fee has drawn many complaints through the years, city officials have said, adding that delinquencies in fee payments had been a longtime problem. A report to the City Council last year showed about 7,800 households were delinquent on their community service fee payments as of August, costing the city as much as $190,000 annually in past due charges, according to some estimates.
The Maumelle City Council in 2006 approved reducing the fee over a five-year period when the charge was $30 per quarter.
The community service fee was created in 1985 when Maumelle incorporated as a city.
The ordinance to reduce the fee is co-sponsored by four aldermen -- Mosley, Preston Lewis, Marion Scott and Jess Holt. Legislation needs five votes from its eight council members for approval.
The City Council has also scheduled a presentation and public hearing Monday at 7:30 p.m, or after the meeting concludes, on a proposed 9 percent water and sewer rate increase by Maumelle Water Management and a 15 percent increase for separate sprinkler meters for lawns. The increase would also raise a debt service fee on the average residential monthly bill from $7.86 to $8.25.
The average residential combined monthly bill is $51.61 now, including the debt service fee.
Metro on 07/04/2015