Over the next several weeks there will be a lot of trash talk - no, not necessarily between the candidates for mayor, but about the proposed new solid waste fee that is part of Auburn City Manager Mark Palesh's proposed 2007-08 city budget.

As with all new programs, the devil will truly be in the details.

The biggest question for most is: how is this going to work? Secondary questions may be: will you get a special assessment depending on usage (it looks as if it will now be added to your water bill)?; and what if you already pay for pickup? Can you pay for special trash bags to get away from the fee? All of these questions and more are still out there, yet to be answered.

Palesh seems to be taking a page out of management guru Tom Peter's playbook of a “ready, fire!, aim” strategy. While that may not sound as if it makes sense, it allows him and his staff to put in place the mechanism for all of this to work starting July 1, although he says that the implementation details of how it will become operational may take up to eight months.

His main emphasis over the next six weeks, as the city council reviews the budget and likely proposes changes to it, is to sell this idea not only to his five bosses, but the community at large. In the past that has not been an easy task.

Auburn's budget history of the last two decades is littered with talk about coming up with such a fee. More than anything, the manager has crossed one of the major threshold's he needed to cross, on the general fund issue of double payments.

Possibly paying attention to his predecessors' failures (specifically James Malone and John Salomone), Palesh is transferring the burden of the $1.2 million it costs for collection, that is only paid by about 66-percent of property owners (2,300 tax exempt properties don't share the cost of collection though may get the service), to everyone who will use the service, generating an estimated $1.2 million through the new solid waste fee.

That has been a sticking point for past supporters of going to this type of system. A perceived “greedy” city manager could not get both a fee and pay for collection out of the general fund, and Palesh knows that would kill any chance of going to a pay for play system.

What he is proposing is not new as a concept. More than a decade ago the city went to a similar plan for water and sewer services that, despite a recent failure of the city to keep up with costs, has served the city well. Such a system works best only when there are no exemptions or exceptions to the rule.

It is now time for the city council and public to learn how this is all going to work.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com