Opinion: Opaque title of Bloomington ordinance misleads residents about trash collection fee hike

Appearing on the Bloomington city council’s May 17 meeting agenda, which was released after 5 p.m. on Friday, is a proposed new ordinance.

The ordinance was given a 32-word title: “Ordinance 23-11 – To Amend Title 6 of the Bloomington Municipal Code Entitled “Health and Sanitation” – Re: Updating and Harmonizing Chapters 4 and 5 of Title 6 of the Bloomington Municipal Code.”

At first glance, this title makes the proposed revision to the law seem innocuous.

However, buried inside this verbose yet opaque title is a major increase in the trash collection fees paid by residents—which is surely controversial.

When the trash collection fee for most of the residents who get the service is proposed to be increased by 75 percent, that should have a clear reflection in the ordinance title.

By choosing a title that obfuscates the actual content of the legislation, the first reading of the ordinance at Wednesday’s city council meeting will not provide residents with the transparency and honesty they deserve from their local government.

Updating and harmonizing Chapters 4 and 5 of Title 6 of the Bloomington Municipal Code just sounds like a necessary and benevolent action—perhaps a cleanup of outdated wording. The reality is that it will result in at least a 58-percent increase in trash collection fees. That’s the smallest percentage increase proposed for any of the three cart sizes.

For residents who use the largest cart size, the fee is proposed to increase by 95 percent—that’s basically a doubling of the monthly cart fee, from $18.52 to $36.19 per month.

The saving grace of the city council’s procedure for introducing a proposed ordinance is supposed to be the synopsis, which gets read aloud by the city clerk on the occasion of a first reading. Nothing else is allowed to happen at a Bloomington city council first reading, except for the reading of the title and synopsis—unless one councilmember wants to be brave enough to demand the reading of the entire ordinance.

The synopsis of the Ordinance 23-11, which is just six words longer than the title, reads like this:

This ordinance makes several changes to Title 6 of the BMC to bring the Title in line with changed local practice, to adjust service fees, to clarify references, and to harmonize current practices with the City Code.

The only clue that the ordinance might involve an increase in trash collection fees is the phrase “adjust service fees.” It’s commonplace for private corporate entities that are announcing rate increases to call them rate adjustments—a tawdry marketing ploy that is so common that it’s a cultural embarrassment. Residents deserve better from their local government.

It’s a shame the author of the synopsis did not see fit to increase the word count by just one, swapping in “trash collection” for “service.”

This brazen lack of transparency is unacceptable, especially when it comes to matters that directly impact a resident’s wallet.

Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s administration has a responsibility to be honest and upfront about the purpose and effects of the ordinances that it puts in front of the city council. The city council has a responsibility to hold the administration accountable by demanding clear and transparent wording for the title and synopsis of an ordinance.

Residents should not be left to decipher the true meaning that lurks behind the title of an ordinance. It is the local government’s duty to provide clear and concise wording that accurately reflects the content of an ordinance.

By allowing vague and convoluted wording to serve as the initial formal announcement that a big trash collection rate increase will be considered by the council, the mayor and the council are doing a disservice to the community they are supposed to serve. Failure to complete a simple task like writing a clear ordinance title erodes trust and confidence in local government.

Do trash collection need to be increased? Probably so. That’s true even if the increase were intended to cover just the cost of curbside collection of trash—not including the cost of curbside recycling collection. The city’s curbside recycling collection program requires running additional, separate trucks, using additional drivers.

But the policy question in front of the city council is bigger than that kind of incremental increase. The size of the proposed increases looks consistent with an effort to ensure that trash cart fees also cover the cost of curbside recycling collection.

It has up to now been an intentional policy choice by the city of Bloomington to subsidize the cost of curbside recycling, by covering those costs with money from the city’s general fund.

The policy question for the city council is certainly worth asking: Should the city stop subsidizing the cost of curbside recycling?

Factoring into the mix for that policy choice is the fact that the city’s curbside waste collection—for trash and recycling—is provided only to buildings with four or fewer units.

Residents who live in larger buildings pay income taxes and indirect property taxes through their rent, which lands in the city’s general fund. Should those residents help subsidize the curbside recycling costs for the residents of smaller buildings? If that situation is determined to be inequitable, how should it be rectified?

Charging more to current curbside waste collection customers is just one way to achieve equity. Another path to equity would be to rethink how recyclables are collected. A possible solution would be to expand the service of systematic collection for recyclable materials to all residents—regardless of the size of the building where they live.

Another policy question raised by the proposed fee increase is whether the per-gallon cost for carts should be progressive across cart sizes.

Under the current fee structure, residents who opt for a bigger cart size already pay more per month than those who opt for a smaller cart size. The 35-gallon cart costs $6.51 per month compared to $18.52 for a 96-gallon cart. The cost per gallon for each cart size is similar—but not truly progressive, because the middle-sized cart is the least expensive per gallon. The mid-sized cart is also the most popular.

But the proposed new rate structure amplifies the difference in cost for different cart-sizes, by making the cost per gallon clearly progressive across cart size: 29 cents per gallon for 35-gallon carts; 32 cents per gallon for 64-gallon carts; and 38 cents per gallon for 96-gallon carts. That’s a policy choice that deserves thorough deliberation.

In conclusion, the opaque title for Ordinance 23-11 misleads residents about the actual effect of the proposed new law. The kind of substantive policy discussion that trash fee increases deserve is not helped by an ordinance title that doesn’t say what the ordinance is about.

The council should prioritize transparency and honesty in all their actions, especially when it comes to matters that directly impact how much residents pay for services. A more straightforward and honest title would have been “Ordinance 23-11 – To Increase Trash Collection Fees by at least 58 percent.”

To give residents the transparency they deserve, on Wednesday, the city council should vote at the start of their meeting to take Ordinance 23-11 off their agenda, with a request to the administration to revise the ordinance title and synopsis so that it’s clear what the ordinance is about.

[The color coding of the rows is meant to highlight the rank order of the cost per gallon: red is most expensive, yellow is the middle, and green is the least expensive.]

[Updated May 15, 2023 at 4:16 p.m. The city council has now issued a revised title to the ordinance. The new title reads: “TO AMEND TITLE 6 OF THE BLOOMINGTON MUNICIPAL CODE ENTITLED “HEALTH AND SANITATION – Re: Updating and increasing fees for service and harmonizing Chapters 4 and 5 of Title 6 of the Bloomington Municipal Code”]