Letter: Raise property tax rate instead of adding fee

There is a proposal to charge a trash pickup fee to residents (“Combine lower property tax rates with new trash fee, Caldwell says,” Star-Advertiser, April 25).

The city needs more revenue. That is not surprising, given the huge government employee unfunded pension liability that needs to be made whole. For decades, taxpayers received the benefit of lower-than-necessary taxes, due to the lack of political will of legislators (both state and city) to increase taxes to properly fund the liability each year. Now those taxpayers’ children and grandchildren will suffer the consequence of significant tax increases to catch up what should have been paid in earlier.

Getting back to the trash pickup fee: One has to question whether this is the right approach. Is it really worth creating a new administrative bureaucracy to bill and collect the new fee? Wouldn’t it be more efficient just to increase the property tax rate, since that billing and collection system is already in place? That way, no new bureaucracy would need to be established.

Doug Tonokawa

Kailua

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