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Condominium owners in New Carrollton facing a $50 annual fee for trash removal say their taxes are already too high, but city officials said they got slammed by an 80 percent increase in fees by the company contracted to pick up the waste.

The New Carrollton City Council approved the annual fee Dec. 15, which will go into effect July 1, the start of fiscal 2012, and would generate $41,650 to go toward increased costs for the contracted service from Bladensburg's Capitol Sanitation Services. There is an anticipated increase in dumping fees paid to Prince George's County, maintenance of public works trucks and the cost of fuel to drive to the county's Brown Station Landfill in Upper Marlboro that will close in 2011.

Michael Grillo, sales manager of Severn-based Independent Environmental Services, Inc., which bought out Capitol Sanitation in October, was unavailable until Jan. 4.

There are 833 city condominiums between Frenchman's Creek Condominiums and Carrollan Gardens.

"Is that going to help us? Well, we have to wait until the fiscal year [ends] and see," said Greg Wills, New Carrollton's public works director.

Frenchman's Creek resident Fredia Tatum said she pays $500 annually in city taxes and does not understand why trash removal wasn't already included in that bill, whether the annual fee was $50 or $100.

"Where is that money going to?" Tatum said. "How come that couldn't be part of the taxes? We're not a single-family home where they come and get the leaves. Whether they lower [the annual fee] or not, I think they should do it because our taxes are accountable for just that — picking up the trash."

Frenchman's Creek resident Danielle Carpenter wrote in a Dec. 21 e-mail to The Gazette that the city should discontinue duplication of services the county already provides, such as an animal control program.

"The city of New Carrollton's council and administration need to examine its own excess and eliminate it, instead of passing along more fees to the resilient but fee-weary taxpayers of the city," Carpenter wrote.

City Administrative Officer J. Michael Downes said both condominium and single-family homeowners receive the same tax-supplied services for trash removal, and residents' taxes go toward services such as police and code enforcement.

The City Council approved a $100 annual fee for about 2,500 single-family homes receiving behind-the-home trash pick-up from the city's public works department. Capitol Sanitation is contracted to remove condominium Dumpster trash. The city is on a month-to-month contract as they renegotiate the contract that ran from 2006 to July 2009.

The city held three public hearings for condo owners prior to the vote about the fees and no more than six attended the Dec. 1 hearing, said assistant city administrative officer Graham Waters. Councilman Richard Bechtold disagreed with the initial proposal of $100 because of a difference in how the trash is removed but said $50 was fair considering single-family homes pay twice as much.

"The council as a whole decided that, pretty much the same as I did, that it was too high of a figure," Bechtold said. "It was just through discussions and through the comments voiced at the [public hearing] meetings by the condo owners."

Single-family home fees would generate at least $250,000 to go toward $273,000 in county dumping fees. Dumping fees increased by $42,500 from $230,500 in fiscal 2010.

nmcgill@gazette.net