Portlanders who refuse to pay their sewer bills, may discover that their overdue bill has been converted into a property tax debt.
The reason why the city of Portland is forcing this "trade-off" is because unlike water, gas and electricity, sewer services cannot actually be shut off when a customer is delinquent in their payments.
"They will eventually lose their property through a tax foreclosure if they don't pay it," said John Popenuk, City of Portland Customer Service Supervisor."
$300,000 in consumer sewer debt to the County assessor's office will be transferred this week.
Wait a minute; you got to be kidding me.
With taxes and fees constantly forever on the rise, it's no wonder why the city is experiencing delinquency.
However, look where some of the money for this utility charge is going for.
In a May 19, 2010 article of the Oregonian, Portland Mayor Sam Adams officially unveiled his $450 million budget proposal calling for steep increases in water and sewer fees... with some of that money going towards according to Willamette Week, $500,000 for new community college scholarships which Mayor Sam Adams says will "get our youth on track in high school." In addition to park tree maintenance and river planning. The budget also included a new $15 or $30 annual fee for homeowners who live in neighborhoods that receive "leaf pickups" in the fall.
WHAT!!!
Utility fees going for college scholarships?
Okay, I have no problem with school scholarships; however, I do have a problem with being forced to be one of the unwilling contributors to the scholarship like the people of Portland are with their utility bill.
And they wonder why people do not trust the government.
Additional information on the rate hike at KATU
3 comments:
This is not new. Perhaps you remember in Eugene about 15 years ago an elderly brother and sister lost their family home to the city when they refused to connect to the sewer line they forced on us. I remember well because I was forced to connect or be fined daily.
I do remember that in the Santa Clara area that there was a battle over connecting to a sewer line and that the city of Eugene annexing a large portion of Santa Clara.
A friend of mine convinced the city to let him do his own sewer connection which saved him a ton of money.
Can't have those evil septic tanks you know.
The claim was if I remember correctly for the groundwater, however, I think in reality it was just for the extra money that it wouild generate.
Here's what I remember about the event. The city wanted to build that big treatment plant on River Ave.
They wanted State money to help. They promised that if they got the money they would lay a large collector line through River Rd. and a majority of property owners could be convinced to connect to it.
They coerced some property owners to annex to the city and when others were surrounded they in turn had to annex via State law.
This increased taxes to the city and made them connect to the sewer.
I indeed did most of the work myself but it still cost me a lot of money and a lot of labor for no reason, my septic tank was working fine.
The gist is that they used the power of the city government to make people that were not even in the city do something that they didn't want to do under threat of losing their home. It worked.
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