Much of Monday’s Carroll County Board of Supervisors meeting was spent discussing garbage—literally.
Several citizens had been placed on the agenda to dispute garbage bill charges. Some of the disputes were valid, some were not.
Complaints may be on the rise for several reasons. Firstly, per state law, a resident cannot get a car tag unless their garbage bill is up-to-date and fully paid. According to House Bill 1149, passed in 2017 by the Mississippi Legislature, a “designated county official or the billing and collection entity shall identify those license tags that shall not be issued due to delinquent garbage fees.”
At the local level, the county recently updated its computer systems, which are now able to better match up addresses with delinquent garbage bills to addresses used to get a car tag, beat 4’s Claude Fluker said. The state law plus the more efficient systems means that both current and former Carroll County residents are now having holds placed on their tags for expensive bills that they may not even have been aware of.
One resident living in Fluker’s beat came on Monday to protest a nearly $2,000 garbage bill that was nearly 10 years old. In her case, the bill had belonged to her mother before she passed in 2009. Since the woman currently lives at her mother’s old home and uses that address to get her tag, a lien was placed on her tag after the system matched the addresses.
This woman’s unique case was described as “a sticky situation” by both Fluker and beat 1’s Jim Neill. It is “sticky” because the garbage bill is attached to the address and not necessarily to whose name the property is titled under.
There were also cases where a spouse or family member had lived at a property, although they did not own the property and paid no bills there, and received delinquent garbage bills because they used the address to register a tag.
Fluker said that as unfair as it may seem, he is only able to do whatever the law allows him to do when handling these situations.
Tax Collector Wilton Neal attempted to offer clarity on who gets billed and why. According to Neal, when a resident of Carroll County uses an address to get a tag, the address is automatically assigned a garbage bill, whether the person pays other bills at the residence or not. Neal gave the reasoning that if someone is living somewhere, they’re generating garbage.
This approach casts a wide net and makes adjustments as necessary, as opposed to the county having to absorb costs because it can’t track down the owners of delinquent bills.
Neill estimated that every year about 12-15% of people just won’t pay their bill. For people in this category, there is nothing the board can do. Saying the bill is too expensive just isn’t reason enough to make the bill disappear, he said.
There are some cases, however, that may be able to reach a compromise with the board. For example, one couple on Monday was able to prove that they had been charged by the county for a period of time after they were no longer living in the county. In this case, the board voted in the couple’s favor.
Ultimately, “Any money is better than none,” Neill said. He estimated that the outstanding garbage bills total up to several hundred thousands of dollars that have yet to be collected. The board desperately wants to see this number go down.
In other news:
The board voted to more strictly adhere to state law on who can receive a firefighters’ tag. The firefighter must be certified at least three years, the vehicle must be in the active firefighter’s name and the firefighter can only get the tag on one vehicle.
The board voted on two measures that allow the county to move forward on being eligible for a home owners rehabilitation grant that could total up to $500,000.
Doll Stanley of In Defense of Animals came to the board to discuss the tethering practices of Carroll County residents. She gave examples of chains being too short, water being placed directly in the sun and becoming too hot to drink by the end of the day and dog houses that are placed where there is no shade. The board will revisit whether or not to enforce some type of regulation at their next meeting.
The board approved the yearly contract for Benecom Tech for AS400 in the amount of $1,368.
The board approved Andy Vining’s request to proceed with the application of grants to the MS Forestry Commission (in the amount of $4,500) and to Homeland Security (no maximum amount).
