The Chronicle‘s Matt Stiles reports that some residents of Houston’s new, dense townhouse developments are in a sort of limbo when it comes to municipal trash collections:
WHEN lawyer Mark Kressenberg bought a loft-style townhouse in the Third Ward last year, he assumed the city would pick up his trash, as it does for about 300,000 other Houston homes.
He was wrong.
City solid waste officials told Kressenberg and his neighbors in the Calumet Street Lofts that they weren’t covered by the city’s garbage pickup ordinance because their new development had narrow, private driveways. They made that ruling even though many of the townhouses are bordered by public streets, or aren’t far from them, and despite the fact that the city collects from some similar properties elsewhere.
“The interior units are probably no more than 60 yards away from a curbside,” Kressenberg told the City Council recently, arguing that he and his neighbors are eligible for service. “To use that as the basis for denying us trash collection is ludicrous.”
Obviously, city garbage trucks can’t be expected to go down narrow private driveways for trash collection. Then again, these people are paying taxes, and it’s not unreasonable for them to expect trash collection. Surely some of the brighter minds of our city can come up with a compromise solution.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the White Administration if the possibility of a new fee weren’t lurking:
White said his task force will explore the private collection issue and the possibility of creating a garbage enterprise fund, separate from the tax-supported general fund that now pays for solid waste management. Such a fund, like those used by other cities, would need revenue — perhaps from a new trash-collection fee.
It’s not as if these dense, expensive townhouse developments aren’t boosting the property tax rolls. Indeed, as the story points out, some of these townhouses were built on previously vacant lots, significantly boosting property tax revenues. The city doesn’t need to use this relatively simple problem as an excuse to create a trash-collection revenue stream.
