Newark’s Mayor and City Council reviewed additional revenue streams to boost their budget Monday night.
The city’s bank fees for electronic payments have increased 39 percent since 2018, and last year exceeded $1.15 million more than $323,000 of which is from University of Delaware utility payments.
City finance manager David Del Grande presented several solutions for each area where the city loses money to these fees, like adding a surcharge for utility payments.
But Del Grande says the city would need to change vendors, which at the earliest could be done early next year.
“That would leave us with one vendor left to be able to actually handle our billing system," Del Grande says. "It’s already been preapproved and would be the least amount of work. To move to another processor requires us to complete the current Silverblades project which is a new customer service portal.”
The city also spends a lot on credit card fees for parking – almost $460,000 last year, which represents about 15 percent of all revenue generated by parking annually – and is considering eliminating the ½ hour option in parking lots during discount seasons.
City manager Tom Coleman also presented options for a trash collection fee – which costs the city about $2.4 million a year.
But Coleman notes one argument supporting the fee idea is that many residences pay a property tax bill lower than the cost of trash collection - something statewide property reassessments may change.
“If we were to move forward with a refuse fee now, it may overcorrect," Coleman says. "By the time the fee is in place, the property tax issue will be sorted, so those properties are going to get double hit.”
The proposed fee would be about $350 per year per residence. Council members also expressed support for setting a minimum tax rate instead. But most agreed the topic should be revisited after the city knows how much additional revenue will come from property reassessments.
