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County eliminates car decals
Car decals will soon be a thing of the past in Prince William. Not the $24 decal fee – just the decals. On May 19, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors voted 7-1 to eliminate the ubiquitous stickers that residents are required to post on their windshields.Essentially, the stickers don't really serve much purpose anymore, said Steve Ferlotti, an administrator in the county's Finance Department.
The $24 decal fee is essentially a tax, he said. The county brings in about $7 million from the fees and spends about $135,000 sending out the stickers. The rest of the money goes into the county's coffers and residents are then given a decal to prove that they've paid the fee.
But in recent years, collection systems have improved dramatically and nonpayment isn't really a problem so administrators and police don't depend so much on the decals to know whether a car-owner has paid the fee. The decal, Ferlotti said, has become “kind of a moot point.”
Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun, Manassas and Manassas Park all still use decals, he said, but Fairfax and many other jurisdictions have gotten rid of them.
“There is clearly a trend where most jurisdictions have decided to get rid of the decal,” he said.
The only sticking point is the county landfill, where staffers use the decal to verify that people dumping trash are county residents. Since the decal is easily visible on vehicle windshields, landfill employees can wave through all Prince William vehicles, avoiding the backups that would come from checking driver's licenses at the crowded facility.
Ferlotti said landfill officials “feel strongly that they can come up with a reasonable solution to make sure traffic doesn't back up at the landfill” but Joan Moon, a member of the Landfill Citizens Oversight Committee, disagreed.
Moon said its unreasonable to get rid of the easy identifier just because people don't like scraping off the stickers and reapplying them once a year. She also pointed out that the cost savings are minimal: according to county documents, the county would save $135,300 in administration costs by not mailing decals but would lose $105,000 from fines for nonpayment of the fees. So the savings, she said, is only about $30,000.
An alternative method of checking residency at the landfill could cost up to $5,000, so the savings would be even smaller, she said.
“It may even end up costing us more,” if out-of-county residents are able to sneak into the landfill, she said.
Former Brentsville Supervisor Ben Thompson agreed.
“There is a need for a visual recognition of people coming into the landfill,” he said, warning that otherwise, “You'll have people backed up” to get in.
Most of the supervisors, however, opted to get rid of the stickers. The one exception was Coles Supervisor Marty Nohe (R), in whose district the landfill is located. Nohe said he didn't want to support the decal elimination without knowing what the new plan is at the landfill.
But the other supervisors voted in favor of eliminating the decals, which will not be mailed out when the current decals expire. Bills for the decal fee, however, will still show up in the mail.
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