Dear George,

I found Tyler Sewell's comments about fees for service to be rather disingenuous.

The point of the trash stickers (which has been made time and again, I believe) is not, as I'm sure Mr. Sewell well knows, to sneakily take money out of people's pockets when they're not looking.

Rather, the point is to encourage them to "reduce, reuse, recycle." By charging a fee for trash, BUT NOT FOR RECYCLING, residents are encouraged to reduce the amount of trash they generate. I don't live in the city, but I applaud city council for taking this step. I don't doubt that many more people in the city are now recycling since the inception of the stickers. Those of us in the county who separate our trash for pickup do so out of the goodness of our hearts, not because we save any money thereby (we get charged by our haulers just for stopping by, whether we have any trash or no). Accordingly, there are far fewer of us. (Though soon, I understand, we will be able to save money by taking ALL of our recycling to the McIntire center, rather than just those items not included in pickup, since trash haulers will no longer have a recycling option in the county.)

Fees for service (or conversely, tax breaks) can be a simple way to encourage desired changes in citizen (and corporate) behavior--without making restrictive laws. I wish they were used more to encourage people to do things such as drive more fuel-efficient cars or to build smaller, "greener" houses. It can also serve as a progressive tax. The beauty of the late, lamented car tax, for instance, is that it not only provides revenue to the state, but that poor people with smaller, cheaper cars pay far less than those with enough disposable income to buy luxury vehicles or behemoth SUVs.

Local governments should, I believe, apply this to water usage, not by raising water rates as has been done, but by applying fees to water usage commensurate with the level of use. People who take care to conserve water will then be rewarded. People who are so rich that they'd rather have a green lawn and a clean car than save money will pay the bulk of the cost of providing water. Currently, people have been punished for using less water by having the rates raised due to reduced use! (Those of us with wells must conserve or we pay the price by having no water at all.)

Our Republican legislature is where Tyler should be aiming his wrath. Their refusal to ensure that the state has enough money through proper taxation levels has caused local governments to raise property taxes just to maintain needed services. This is truly regressive, and is indeed hurting Virginia's poor and middle-class.

thanks!

Valerie L'Herrou (electronic mail, June 7, 2003)

PS: I'm glad to say that I have seen Mitch Van Yahres at the recycling center more than once.