Huntington WV, like pretty much every other city has it's fair share of problems. One which many others are also dealing with is a budgetary shortfall. However, unlike cities like Los Angeles our's isn't caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. Huntington didn't really feel the bubble swell or burst. Instead, ours is caused by a combination of prior obligations (pensions, insurance, etc) and a collection of people who have not paid their taxes or fees on simply things like the garbage fees.

Here in Huntington we are supposed to pay $15/month for garbage collection for each property we own. That really is a great deal. I've lived in plenty of other places where the garbage fee was anywhere from 50-100/month so I have no sympathy for the people who are dodging the reasonable $15 Huntington charges for such an necessary service. The city has never failed to show up and collect my trash, they have always worked to keep the fee as low as possible by working with the least expensive landfills they can find, and I'm happy to see the trash go away. Thus, when the city published a recent list of folks who owe more than $500 in refuse fees and who haven't made any effort to pay in the past year I was a bit disheartened to see that over $4,000,000 is owed the city. Coincidentally the city is about $4 million in debt so it would be awesome if they could somehow collect these past due fees.

The PDF is a little difficult to consume however so I decided to plot the points in a Google map using the fantastic free tool BatchGeo. Here is the resultant map; I've embedded it here but if you'd like full screen access you can get that by following this link.



If you know anyone on this list please go ask them why they aren't paying their fair share. Ask them why they think it is OK that they are making you foot their share of the bill. The people who do pay their fees are being faced with an additional one time $100 bill plus an increase of $5/month to our refuse fees to help make up this shortfall. Make the deadbeats and dodgers pay their share. I'm not encouraging violence but I am encouraging accountability. If the city can't convince them to pay maybe a little peer pressure will do the trick.

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