Recycling fee: Don’t tax civic and environmental virtue

That the commissioners would seek to tax civic and environmental virtue is short-sighted at best, and 100 percent bass-ackwards (sic) at worst. If they must, they should keep the proposed one-time $1,000 development fee, but instead of levying a tax on conservation-minded citizens, raise the trash tipping-fees even higher yet and use the overage to offset the recycling costs.

January 27, 2010 1:13 pm

Regarding the pending recycling gate fee of $2 per load, I was surprised that the county commissioners would have forgotten what they learned in their high school civics and college economics classes.

Basic to good government: if we the people want more of something, we subsidize it. If we want to see less of something, we tax it. Both are legitimate expressions of a self-guided polity.

That the commissioners would seek to tax civic and environmental virtue is short-sighted at best, and 100 percent bass-ackwards (sic) at worst. If they must, they should keep the proposed one-time $1,000 development fee, but instead of levying a tax on conservation-minded citizens, raise the trash tipping fees even higher yet and use the overage to offset the recycling costs.

If the county can’t do that for a bureaucratic reason, well then, that’s the fight. If the commissioners vote for this, the citizens will call them stupid. And they’d be right.

James Krall
San Juan Island