In Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson’s budget, released in November, the mayor proposed a hike in the trash-collection fee — from $8.95 to $15 a month for most households (with a break for seniors via a homestead exception).

Since the city had just negotiated a good contract — improved over the previous one — with its trash hauler, a fair-minded person would have to call the trash-fee increase a new tax.

That is, the trash-fee hike was not to cover new costs of hauling trash. It was a “revenue enhancement.”

Hold on to that point.

Not surprisingly, the city administration has been quiet about the trash-fee increase since.

Councilman Rob Ludeman, with his usual admirable understatement, said that, seemingly, “everything is on hold” until the March 15 election in which voters will be asked to raise the “temporary tax” (not much temporary about it) from 0.75 to 1 percent.

The permanent tax (passed in 1946) is 1.5 percent. So the total tax in a city in which one fifth of the population and fully one fourth of its children live below the poverty line would go from 2.25 to 2.5 percent.

That’s BEFORE the increase in trash fees.

Now I know that the temporary 1 percent is considered something that simply has to happen by most responsible people.

The city is not paying its operating expenses currently.

It has been taking from its cookie jar — the capital improvements fund — money supposedly set aside for road repair.

And I also could not help but note that, in her recent address to the downtown Rotary, the mayor took a sacred pledge not to spend any of the NEW money on operations.

It will all go to streets.

All the new money.

The old cookie jar can still be raided.

But how do you impose substantial new taxes on a virtual third-world populace when you have not:

● Shown any good-faith effort to economize in city government?

● Made any attempt to reorganize the delivery of services, particularly police and fire?

● Tried in any evident way to streamline or improve the quality of city administration?

● Demonstrated that there is any PLAN for the streets?

We are told there is simply no place to cut — not an ounce of fat in the budget.

Come on.

No, we cannot cut our way to $1.3 billion — what it would cost to fix all the streets. Or maybe even $1.3 million.

But, there is no organization in the world that lacks fat and cannot be cut.

The “plan” simply seems to be to keep feeding the beast.

Fully finance the status quo, so we do not have to change.

Ever.

I agree with Councilman Sandy Spang: We should at least try to make some cuts and get our house in order before we ask the people, many of whom have little, to dig deeper. It’s a matter of simple decency.

But the administration does not want to talk about that. It is focused solely on that 0.25 percent and March 15.

Meanwhile, not enacting the trash tax is costing the city a cool $366,666 a month.

It is a revenue that is not enhancing.

Politics again trumps policy and short views keep us from facing our expensive bad habits.

The mayor needs to come clean with the council and council needs to tell the public the truth.

And maybe defend the little guy.

Councilman Lindsay Webb is on record as opposing the trash-fee hike. I hope she forces us to start talking about it now — not March 16.

Citizens should not have to pay the extra 0.25 percent AND the trash-fee hike.

Especially if they are the only ones being asked to sacrifice.

Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade. Contact him at: kburris@theblade.com or 419-724-6266.

First Published March 8, 2016, 5:00 a.m.