Utility tax for street maintenance funds discussed

Spokane Valley residents may continue to fill firefighters’ boots for charity while they’re in traffic.

But the City Council on Tuesday laid to rest, at least for the time being, a proposal to broadcast meetings and other city information on the Internet. A staff report said the cost might be around $100,000 a year.

In other business, the council agreed to future discussion on the possibility of seeking utility taxes and requiring mandatory garbage collection to raise money for street maintenance.

Council members noted any utility tax would face numerous hurdles, including the need to gain support from wary private utilities and constituents, and perhaps to persuade the Legislature to change state laws.

“There’re lots of questions we haven’t answered yet,” Mayor Rich Munson said in an interview. “These are points of discussion, not points of decision. This council is going to make darn sure it gets all of the facts.”

He said the focus of discussions among council Finance Committee members Diana Wilhite, Steve Taylor and Munson has been on electricity, garbage and telephone service. A tax on water service would be “a tough nut to crack” because there are 13 autonomous water districts in the city and some are federally chartered, Munson said.

He said taxing electricity also would be difficult because the city can’t force other public agencies to participate, and only about 60 percent of residents are served by privately owned Avista.

Munson said the council probably would have to require all households and businesses in the city to sign up for garbage service if it were to tax the service. At present about 28 percent haul their own garbage, Munson said.

If Waste Management Corp. were given the windfall of mandatory garbage collection, “we’d have to see a significant drop in rates because a lot of people couldn’t afford it,” the mayor said.

Any utility tax would be dedicated to closing the projected $2.5 million-a-year gap between street maintenance needs and the money available from gasoline taxes and other street-related revenue, Munson said.

Before imposing a utility tax, he added, council members would want to make sure the revenue would outweigh the high political cost.

The estimated $100,000- to $104,500-a-year cost of posting videos of city meetings on the municipal Web site weighed heavily in the council’s decision Tuesday to back away from the idea.

Some council members questioned the accuracy of the estimates, and Greg Bingaman, the city’s information technology specialist, said he had difficulty coming up with reliable figures. The problem, he said, is that all Washington cities with Web casting also broadcast on cable television and it’s hard to separate the costs.

Bingaman said Spokane Valley could save $40,000 a year by not using an indexed format that allows viewers to go straight to the portions of a meeting they want to see. However, he thought the inconvenience would drive away most viewers.

Finance Director Ken Thompson said the “overwhelming advice” from cities that were surveyed was to “do it right the first time.” A bad presentation will hurt the city’s message, not help it, Thompson said.

Spokane Valley is negotiating a cable television franchise with Comcast, which now is franchised by Spokane County, and the cable company eventually might pay for equipment needed to put meetings on television or on the Web. In the meantime, though, council members were unwilling to proceed.

The informal vote was 4-3. Council members Wilhite, Taylor, Gary Schimmels and Dick Denenny were opposed, while Munson and council members Rose Dempsey and Bill Gothmann were in favor.

Munson was alone in opposing Spokane Valley firefighters’ request for legislation that would allow them to continue walking among cars at busy intersections to collect money for charity.

The firefighters have been warned by City Manager David Mercier’s staff to stay out of traffic when they participate in a regional Fill the Boot drive for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in August. Under Spokane Valley’s city manager form of government, Mercier is in charge of enforcing the city code, which says anyone who “intentionally obstructs vehicular or pedestrian traffic without lawful authority” is guilty of disorderly conduct.

“I think the line could be best drawn where nobody gets into the street,” Munson said when Steve Spuler, president of Local 876 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, and John Nelson, the union’s Fill the Boot director, appealed for relief.

“Rich, I think you’re speaking for one person,” Councilman Taylor said, adding, however, that he had “heartburn” about giving firefighters special treatment.

Other council members had similar misgivings, and Councilman Gothmann wasn’t fond of the firefighters’ tactics, either.

“Even in church, I prefer not to have things passed in front of me,” said Gothmann, who’d rather walk up to a collection box.

As a Southern Baptist, Taylor had no such misgivings: “They pass the plate in front of us all the time.”

Councilwoman Dempsey said she thinks most people enjoy Fill the Boot drives, and the last one she saw had a “carnival” atmosphere in which “people were just having a wonderful time while they did good work.”

Council members agreed the problem could be resolved by adopting a system similar to those used in Spokane, Tacoma and other cities. Permits could be issued to charity workers who are trained to work in traffic and who satisfy other conditions, such as providing liability insurance.

The city staff was directed to research the issue and prepare an ordinance for council consideration.

Nelson wondered whether the current ban on entering traffic would be enforced if no permit system has been adopted in time for this year’s Aug. 2 event.

The question hung awkwardly for a moment, but Dempsey brushed it aside with a call for swift action.