Normally the most interesting pages in The Fountain Hills Times are the letters to the editor, but those were boring last week. The most interesting article last week was delegated to Page 2A about the “environmental fee” and its new billing contract.

First of all, let’s forget the “Environmental fee” name and call it what it is: a property tax increase! The mayor was correct in saying there was no input from citizens prior to the council vote approving it, and I am sure many of those affected are still out of town for the summer.

Worse yet, there is no current way of collecting that kind of a tax increase, so they are considering awarding an $80,000 contract to an out-of-state company just to do this. If I did the math correct, that would be about 7 percent of the amount to be collected, which is certainly not an efficient way to collect additional taxes.

If it is necessary to increase taxes to maintain washes, drains, curbs, gutters and do the things that must be done for improving the community, so be it. But don’t invent some new politically correct name for it.