Electric City plans hearing on car tab fee

A public hearing on Electric City’s new transportation benefit district could be held Sept. 25, City Clerk Jackie Perman said this week.

The city planned the hearing to let the public speak to the fact that the city will charge residents $20 for each licensed vehicle they own.

Perman said that the Sept. 25 date was the earliest that the public hearing could be set.

Through a new law, the city can now charge a $20 license fee for each licensed vehicle a resident owns. The fee would be collected when a person purchases their tabs.

Mayor Jerry Sands explained to his council that, the way the new law reads, if the city doesn’t establish the transportation benefit district, the county could do so and collect the fee for county programs.

To emphasize his point, Sands told the council that the city had $1.125 million in its street program in 2009, but in 2011, that amount was down to $937,000. He pointed out that the fund was slowly being depleted since the city no longer was being funded by the state at the former license fee rate.