Shane Wade
Opinion Editor
You may not be aware of this, but the dozens of people that rallied outside city hall on Monday were protesting the city of Richmond for pocketing $49.40 of their money for having active water and sewage services.
It’s an exorbitant amount, particularly for a city facing 9.7 percent unemployment, serious infrastructure issues and a history of economic disparities. Richmond residents pay up to three times the amount that neighboring localities, like Henrico, pay. If that doesn’t alarm you, the fact that we pay the highest service charge in the entire nation should.
In addition to being costly, the charge represents a type of regressive tax structure that is inherently unfair to the impoverished. College students, senior citizens and anyone operating a household with a fixed or limited income has no discourse with which to combat the charge; if they can’t afford it, they’re out of luck.
At a time of high unemployment, the most basic requirements for human survival — food,water, shelter — shouldn’t be up for sale, especially in the form of a regressive tax structure.
Richmond already has a high food tax of 11 percent, but to make matters worse, in July the Department of Agriculture announced their projection of a 5 percent increase in the price of food as a result of the drought in the Midwest and reductions in agricultural productivity.
The government’s monopoly on a utility shouldn’t be capitalized on for profit, unless that profit is used to improve the service.
The city’s reasoning for the expensive service charges lie behind rusted pipes, but although money is being dispersed for repairing and replacing pipes, the residents of Richmond cannot continually fund a project without seeing progress or results.
By charging a flat fee, the city perpetuates the already rampant disparities between economic classes; charging someone that makes $100,000 a year the same rate as someone that makes $50,00 is patently unfair. It also doesn’t encourage consumers to conserve water, an increasingly valuable resource.
The fact that the city has instituted the water and sewer charges as fees, rather than taxes, becomes particularly insidious once you realize that the fee isn’t tax deductible. Furthermore, fees are taxable, so residents are being charged with a tax upon the fees they’re already paying
There’s a number of things the city can do to correct their mistakes. Reducing other minimum payments to even $20 per month would save the 50,000 plus Richmond residents hundreds of dollars a year.
Instating a more progressive and financially proportional method, such as charging per volume of use rather than by a flat service fee, would provide consumers with a financial incentive to be more conservative in their usage of water, as well as invest in washing machines, water heaters and other units that are energy effective and cost-effective.
If we can mount a protest advocating for marriage equality against corporations, then we have the moral obligation to do the same in favor of our financial well-being and environment. The protest that took place on Monday is only the start of a movement in favor of a progressive city government that prioritizes its citizens’ well being.