Sanitation fees could be included with Houston County property taxes

Debbie Ingram/dingram@dothaneagle.com
Published: May 23, 2008

Houston County sanitation collection is a mess.

The program has a lack of overall coordination, doesn’t have any checks and balances in place, operates with limited automation, lacks reports and followup and is expensive.

Currently, there’s $500,000 in uncollected fees on the county books.

But new Chief Administrative Officer Bill Dempsey has come up with options that would radically change the system, including one proposal that would roll the $15 a month garbage fee into an annual charge that is added to ad valorem taxes each year.

In studying sanitation problems since he was hired nearly six months ago, Dempsey said unless the fee collection method is changed, all the county can hope to collect is 85 percent of what’s due.

Part of the problem comes with landlords and tenants. Currently if renters don’t pay, the landlords are billed. From that point on, they are always billed, even if the tenant moves. A new system would restart the billing to the new tenant when one moves in.

“This is probably the biggest complaint we get,” said Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver. “There are people with a lot of rental houses who don’t like this.”

Those residents more than 90 days in arrears are taken to small claims court, at a cost of $37 per case. But the county has not been consistent in filing the cases in a timely manner and the court process is quite slow.

There are other costs associated with trying to identify homes and their residents, so Dempsey hopes to match the county system with the Enhanced 911 emergency system data base.

The lack of automated reports affects several areas, Dempsey said.

“We need reports. We need to know, today they are 90 days past due. Today we entered someone into the court system. Today we need to turn this over to the landlord. Today this has been in the court system 30 days. We need to know these things.”

Lee County is currently the only county in Alabama collecting garbage fees with property taxes, a system they went to more than 20 years ago. Making that change would require a legislative act but would solve a lot of problems.

“Everything we talked about today as a can of worms, is going away under this proposal,” Dempsey said. “We could begin by fall 2010.”

Sanitation fees would be collected the year after services are provided.

“Payments would be made in arrears except for those in mobile homes. This would create a one-year gap in revenues,” Dempsey said.

Those who are exempt from ad valorem taxes would be exempt from the fees. These include people who are:

n 100 percent disabled.

n Over 65 and do not file income taxes.

n Over 65 with a taxable income of less than $7,500.

“Poor people would not have to pay and everybody gets a free year,” County Engineer Mark Pool said. “The costs will be down, because we won’t have to be out checking houses to see if anybody lives there.”

This system would also eliminate collection problems.

“Lots of people are having problems with this. Everybody is having a problem with collecting these fees except Lee County. In Coffee County, the court system has asked the county not to bring any more forward. There are too many cases,” Dempsey said.

Commissioners decided to come up with a list of questions for Lee County regarding their system.