up some issues to this forum that may not hit the public's notice
otherwise.
A case in point is his August E-newsletter's reference to a new .5% tax
increase to all Minneapolis utility users:
"*Franchise Fee Increase to Fight Climate Change.* The Mayor’s proposed
budget includes an additional source of revenue through a 0.5 % increase in
the City’s natural gas and electricity franchise fees. This could bring in
an estimated $2 million and is consistent with the Clean Energy
Partnership’s call to raise additional resources aimed at reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, implementing more of our Climate Action Plan and
paying for renewable energy efforts undertaken by the City, its residents
and businesses."
A .5% (half-a-cent per dollar) tax increase--call it a franchise fee, but
it's monthly tax on all our gas and electricity use--may not seem like
much. But it's one of the most regressive types of taxes a city can impose;
everyone, no matter how strapped, has to pay it. And that half-a-cent is
added to the other percentages of franchise fees and taxes we pay on
necessities. (Hennepin County just added another .5% tax, to pay for
transit.)
Have you looked at the percentage of non-commodity use costs that appear on
your gas bill and your electricity bill? At the total of taxes and fees
imposed, after and beyond the actual cost of gas or electricity? Maybe put
that percentage on top of the gigantic "Basic Charge" that the MN PUC
permits, that is completely disassociated from usage level.
These fees and taxes represent an accumulation of this and that and the
other apparently "small" fee increases. Silently imposed. Hitting those at
the bottom of the economic scale the hardest.
Maybe I'm just sensitive to these fees, because I have a solar thermal (hot
water heating) system that means I use two or three therms of gas each
summer month, mostly to cook. During the summer, my gas bill fees and taxes
are much larger than my cost of gas used.
By dribs and drabs, these are silently-increasing regressive taxes.
Even if what these taxes are used for seem to be good uses, should we
accept that the city's, and the county's default taxation-increase option
is to add another half-a -cent tax on utilities, hoping we won't notice?
Connie Sullivan
Como, in Southeast Minneapolis