Cities throughout Wisconsin are using fees - like the proposed garbage fee - to offset budget increases. No judgment there, but the state encourages municipalities to use fees to work around the Expenditure Restraint Program.

If Waukesha starts to impose fees for this and that,then they will be following the lead of their very best friends in MILWAUKEE! Waukesha citizens, did you move out here to be treated just like the poor saps that are trapped in Milwaukee. I say find another way and no to fees!!!

Since commercial and condo owners pay the same taxes and to have pay privately for garbage, it's only fair that garbage is removed from the general taxes. Many communities already do this. And great job on the 0% levy two years in a row!

Many communities around us such as Oconomowoc, Menomonee Falls, and Pewaukee have been charging garbage fees for many years. Other communities around the state have separate fees such as Appleton, Beloit and Greenfield and many communities such as Eau Claire and New Berlin provide no trash service at all.

Seems as though some people like "the antipowell" like to project negative things into the future, promote unfairness, scare people, and will never be happy.

This budget seems fair, reasonable, is a whole lot better than we had a few years ago, and with this 0% levy will set us up for a promising future. 

We just added a poll to get a sense of where people stand on the proposed garbage fee.

Some of the comments above, including the wording of the survey attached to this article, speak to what’s wrong with this country. The right is pulling further right, the left is pulling further left, the media is just trying to make a buck, and very few people want to compromise and find middle ground.

To Sarah Millard’s credit, she did write a relatively fair article. This proposed budget in Waukesha does seem to strike a compromise… “a 2.43 percent spending decrease compared to last year… The city eliminated $3.6 million from its budget… cuts are proposed in the 2012 budget. They include: unfunded vacant positions; $223,000; two police vehicles; $55,800; asphalt grinder; $136,000; borrowing for a Parks & Recreation vehicle; $26,000…”

Separating the garbage fee from the tax bill is reasonable as now, for the first time in Waukesha, only the properties classes that use this service in will pay for it. This is fair. I personally do not mind paying this fee.

I am proud to live in a city that promotes fairness, value and a good quality of life. Now I’m going to go for walk one of Waukesha’s beautiful parks, visit our award winning library and spend time with my grandchildren.

Pure and simple, this is a tax increase. It sucks.

Removing trash from the taxes and only charging those properties who use this city service is fair, plain and simple.

The 0% levy is great, as it establishes a conservative baseline for the 2013 budget.

Perhaps the Patch should change their survey question to "Do you support the city cutting services?"

Would a homeowner be forced to use the garbage service and pay the fee, or could they opt out if there are other means to dispose of their own garbage?

If you can not opt out than this is a tax, plain and simple. For anyone to claim otherwise is simply foolish and they are hoping the public is too dumb to notice.

I am also curious if we are charged for a garbage fee relative to how much garbage we produce? I mean, it could be a good way to encourage recycling, and to not penalize those of us who have very little garbage. Of course, I wonder how much the recycling collected went down with the every other week recycling pickup.

I ask all of you lovers of the proposed garbage tax to come in from the park and stop singing kumbaya long enough to consider this proposal for a new "users fee".

In the spirit of fairness and so that everyone pays their fair share of the cost of providing services to the entire city I suggest that the city charge a "City Services Fee" against all property that is not currently taxed. The amount of the fee to be the difference between the final spending amount of the budget and the amount of income to the city based on a 0% increase to properties which are currently taxed.

" 'sha guy" and "Skirnir" this is a good idea. Perhaps after the city gets this garbage payment equity among various property types, they could move to a "only pay for what you throw" program, which as you suggest would only charge residents for the garbage they produce and credit them for the materials they recycle. A win for residents that want to save both kinds of green!

Regardless whether you think this new user fee is fair or not lets be honest about it, it's still increased costs to the property owner. All property owners will be required to pay the "fee", now opt out. Unlike tax increases the politicians will find it easier to raise the fee down the road without public outcry. Lets not forget that fees are not deductible on our income tax return, so we get hit twice.

Since the city has not yet posted the budget memo, will Waukesha Patch?

If our engineering department had changed direction years ago when the incinerator was shut down and commingled the garbage and sewage waste streams, we could have been generating methane and high quality fertilizer years ago.
We could have been generating income instead of controversy.
FWIW, if we are going down this path, then it makes sense that the fee must be related to the weight of the waste collected. Just put a RFID on the curb at the pickup point, and incorporate a scale on the truck to assess an equitable fee.

Why are we adding a user fee to a service almost everyone MUST use? Why not raise the user fees for Waukesha Metro, the pools and other park & rec services to make up the difference? Those would be voluntary fee increases. A forced fee is a tax.

The article claims 2.7 million savings from this fee. $136 per household means they are estimating just under 20k households will pay this fee (number rounded because the estimated savings is clearly rounded).

Since the official number of households I see in Waukesha is closer to 25k (The City of Waukesha official website claims nearly 27k in 2000, US Census Bureau claims just over 25k for the same year), this leads me to wonder how they arrived at this number.

There are additional details that are needed to understand the numbers presented. Now, it is possible that the number of households has gone up very significantly so that there are now in 2011 nearly 19k non-apartment households. If so, that should be supported by additional details. Right now, I can't make the numbers add up.

Hi Mark, a number of those households would include larger residential developments (condos, apartments) such as those developed by the Scrima family that do not use city garbage services even as they use a disproportionately high amount of other city services.

looks like scotty walkers cuts are not working so good for all you righties in waukeshau!
well, he didn't raise taxes, but he screwed you on the garbage by cutting revenue sharing! can't wait to see how many of you cry now!