When the Winston-Salem City Council agreed Monday night to pay part of the cost of recycling with property taxes, council members set in motion a plan that could lead to small tax increases each of the next four years.
The council, in approving its budget for the coming fiscal year, agreed to pay $519,000 -- 20 percent -- of the cost of the $2.8 million recycling program. Before the council's decision Monday night, recycling was paid for using money from the city's solid-waste fund, which is mainly funded by tipping fees collected at the city's landfills.
If the city decides to keep adding to the percentage of the recycling program it pays for with property tax money, the tax rate for recycling alone would have to increase another quarter of a cent each year. By the end of the five-year period, the owner of a home assessed at $150,000 inside the city limits would be paying $26.25 more in taxes a year to cover recycling
...In 1992, the first full year of curbside recycling, the city paid almost $600,000 to pick up recyclables from about 50,000 households. The $2.8 million the city now pays to collect from about 70,000 households represents a 360 percent increase.
The increased cost is an average cost of $40 per household. Currently, I haul recycling to the town recycling center every 2-3 weeks. If recycling takes about an hour, then that amounts to about 21 hours per year. I'd need to value my time at about $2 per hour to make the $40 in taxes worthwhile.
