SCRANTON — Mayor Wayne Evans’ proposed a 2020 city budget that would scrap the $300 annual trash fee, but fold it into the property tax.
The $116 million budget, released today, contemplates a major change in the way the city charges for garbage collection, by creating an as-yet-undetermined flat-rate property tax millage for trash pickup, city Business Administrator David Bulzoni said in an interview.
This new garbage bill would be the same across the board in all property tax bills, and broken out separately from regular property taxes, he said.
That way, the garbage fee would remain the same for all payers, and not fluctuate based on assessed valuation of property, as does the regular property tax bills, he said.
“We’re looking at it as a fee in the property tax bill,” Bulzoni said. “It’s part of a very significant shift” in the way the city would charge and collect the garbage bill.
The regular property tax and its underlying millages would remain the same in 2020, he said. Other taxes that also would remain the same in 2020 include the 2.4% city wage tax (the school district also charges a 1% wage tax), the realty transfer tax and local services tax.
The trash fee that a resident would see broken out separately on a property tax bill has not been determined yet, but presumably would be lower than the current annual $300 fee, because a new trash fee would be spread out among a larger base of payers, Bulzoni said.
Under this new trash-fee method, delinquent trash fee collections would be added into the collections of delinquent property taxes, he said.
A millage rate for garbage collection would have to be authorized under separate legislation that the administration expects to present to City Council for enactment before the end of the year, he said.
Meanwhile, the budget proposal and its underlying ordinance will go before Scranton City Council on Monday during its meeting at 6 p.m. at City Hall for a vote on introduction.
The introduction is the first of three votes council will take on the budget, and will be followed in coming weeks by a second vote on advancement and a third vote on adoption.
Council also will hold a caucus on the proposed budget on Dec. 4 at 5 p.m. at City Hall, Bulzoni said.
The proposed 2020 budget also includes another major tax change: eliminating business privilege/mercantile taxes with a new payroll tax. This move has been in the works for some time, as a piece of the city’s Act 47 recovery plan.
However, because of the timing of collections of these two categories of taxes, the 2020 budget only accounts for collecting one quarter of a new payroll tax. That’s because business privilege/mercantile taxes levied in 2019 won’t be collected until April 15, 2020. A payroll tax would be collected quarterly. Under law, when replacing business privilege/mercantile taxes with a payroll tax, they cannot overlap. So, the 2020 budget anticipates starting the payroll tax collections in the third quarter of 2020; and collections of this third quarter won’t roll in until the fourth quarter of 2020, Bulzoni said.
The changes in the trash fee and business privilege/mercantile taxes have made the 2020 budget the most complicated budget that Bulzoni has prepared since he became business administrator in 2014.
“There are a lot of moving parts” to the 2020 budget, he said.
Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5185; @jlockwoodTT on Twitter