At its July 10th meeting, the Huntington City Council gave a first reading of an ordinance that called for an increase in the refuse collection fee. The proposal would call for increasing the fee from five to ten dollars. Also
included in the proposal is a change in the billing, which would become quarterly instead of biannually.
Mayor Dean, in her comments before Council, estimated that the changes would increase the cities revenues by $650,000.00 a year.
Members of Council already were staking out positions on the matter.
"This is nothing more than smoke and mirrors," said Councilman Jim Ritter. "We changed the ordinances some years back to eliminate the various fees we
had, one of them being a garbage fee. We then turned around and created the Municipal Fee, which took those various fees and lumped them together. Now we are raising a fee we supposedly got rid of years ago but decided to reenact in 1994."
Two other significant points of the plan were an exemption for those whose median income falls below $14,000 and that the ordinance would take effect
July 1, 2000. The point is extremely significant as it may brings up the question of whether the city is passing an ex post facto law.
More to follow. A copy of the ordinance will be posted on our site shortly.
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