After slashing equipment and other possible expenditures,Brookhaven aldermen remain in line to take the unpopular step ofraising garbage fees by $3 a month.

Even with spending cuts, Brookhaven officials see the increasefrom $9 to $12 a month as the only way to make the solid wastebudget balance. Some landfill-related fee increases are planned,but those will trim only about $53,000 from a projected deficit ofaround $300,000.

A $3 a month increase is estimated to bring in an additional$147,600 based on the city’s 4,100 customers. Combined with thelandfill-related action, the fee increases would add up to around$204,000, leaving a deficit that could possibly be covered withsome carryover funds from this year.

During a Thursday work session, City Clerk Iris Rudman said shehad received several calls from residents concerned about thepossible increase. Concerns involved the fee taking a bigger partof the citizens’ low or fixed incomes.

“They didn’t see where they could go up $3,” Rudman said.

Aldermen were sympathetic to the situation and consideredraising the fee by only $1 a month. That, however, did not make abig enough dent in the deficit.

The funding problem arises following a 1996 law that requiressolid waste operations to be self-sufficient. Support revenue isonly allowed to come from a maximum four-mill property tax levy,which the city is doing now, and garbage fees.

Until the the law change, solid waste operations were subsidizedthrough the general fund. Since the law change, operations havebeen covered with surplus funds, but those are now about gone.

In defense of the fee increase, aldermen pointed out the feeshave not been raised in at least 10 years. Ward 1 Alderman DorseyCameron said most things, like cable television rates, do not costthe same as they did 10 years ago.

“If we have to do it, we do it,” Cameron said about the feeincrease.

Aldermen also said the increase would allow the continuation oftwice-a-week pick-up service.

City officials are also considering going to a privatecontractor, but some officials have reservations about that plan.Private service likely would be only once a week, and citypersonnel would be displaced.

“They’ll have one man on the back of the truck and work him fromcan to can’t,” said Mayor Bill Godbold about private firms’operations.

City officials plan to address the garbage fee situation duringa public hearing on the budget Tuesday at 6 p.m. Budgets for solidwaste, water and sewer, and general fund operations must beapproved by Sept. 14.