Atlanta has failed to collect $30 million in garbage fees in the last two years.

That's almost half of what it has spent picking up garbage in that time.

The problem started when Fulton County stopped including the fees on city tax bills. Now city officials are about to ask the county to take the job of collections back, please.

"It was a simple system, one that all the citizens understood," said Atlanta Chief Operating Officer Larry Wallace.

Wallace said he has talked informally with Fulton County Manager Thomas Andrews about the prospect of restoring the garbage collection fees to the city's tax bills. He hopes soon to approach the Fulton County Commission as well.

Councilwoman Clair Muller, chairwoman of the City Utilities Committee, is working to devise a more effective collection plan in case Fulton County won't take it back.

Homeowners were blindsided by the first set of bills sent out by the city in 1998. The city started the billing after Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand said the county no longer would collect fees of any kind for the city.

Problems associated with the bills continued to mount in the city's second year of collection. Collection rates plummeted to just over 50 percent, from more than 90 percent when the county last handled the billing.

Before the city began the billing, homeowners paid for garbage collection from their mortgage escrow accounts with their city and county taxes. For some people on limited or fixed incomes, the new annual bill from the city was difficult to pay in one lump sum.

Other city residents found errors in the bills. For instance, a number of residents in intown neighborhoods such as Midtown and Candler Park discovered they were being overbilled because they were living in houses that had once been carved up into apartments. Even though the houses had been restored to single-family dwellings, they were being billed for the number of apartments that used to exist.

That's what happened to Midtown residents Simone Bayens and her husband, John Klooster. After discovering they had been overbilled for their garbage pickup since buying their house in 1995, they tried to correct the error and get a refund on the more than $800 they estimate the city now owes them.

"We were sending information and resending information," Klooster said. "There would be staff changes and people come and go and you have to start all over. . . . I would love to be able to bill them for the time we've spent trying to get this straightened out."

Earlier this year, the city threatened to put liens on the properties of 5,836 residents even though they had paid their garbage bills. After these taxpayers flooded City Hall with protests, the errors were corrected and Chief Financial Officer David Corbin sent an apology letter to those affected.

Councilwoman Muller is devising a new billing system. Under her proposal, garbage fees would be included on homeowners' water bills, which are sent out every other month. That, Muller said, will break the fees into smaller payments that will be easier to afford.

"If we were to bill all these fees six times a year," Muller said, "the city would get the money earlier and the customer would not get that huge lump sum to pay. I also would like a very aggressive, but kind, payment plan."

Corbin said he plans to send a letter next week offering delinquent billpayers a payment plan option.

"We are going to take whatever appropriate measures we can to collect these unpaid bills," Wallace said.

The payment plan would work out even smaller monthly installments for those who need them and for the thousands of city residents who now have overdue bills from the past two years to contend with.

In addition, Muller said, public works and finance officials will be working to improve customer service to handle complaints and to update the city's billing database to reduce the error rate.

Meanwhile, city officials are struggling to cope with the gaping hole the unpaid garbage bills have left in the city budget. A $15 million annual shortfall in collections is further strain on a $448 million budget that carries a deficit of more than $8 million.

"We lost $15 million twice and the public's angry," Muller said. "I think this needs to be fixed."

The Atlantic Journal-Constitution

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2000