To the Editor:

Qualification points for garbage fee relief are very intrusive.

I quote from Mr. (Art) Pope’s recent Tidewater news column (“Quite an effort for waiving $200 fee,” Feb. 10).

If met with original documents as proof and all you can expect is consideration for relief to a fee that should have been a tax in the first place the board now adds insult to injury.

The board developed a reduction fee application, which a person must present with the original documents, not copies, to prove what each household is worth.

Statements include salaries, wages, pension, retirement, Social Security, IRAs, interest earned, dividends, SSI, rental income, fuel assistance, food stamps, capital gains, trust-fund income, real estate values, including how many gravesites you own and the worth, automobiles Kelly Blue Book value, savings accounts, savings certificates, checking accounts with account numbers and balances, cash on hand including what you have in your pocket, stocks, bonds, life insurance policies and documented proof of what each one is worth and the cash-in value, property held in trust and any other assets.

Upon gathering all these documents, you go, wait a few hours and turn them in to see if you qualify for a fee reduction consideration. Then, if approved for a review meeting, you go back again to find out how much of a reduction on the $200 fee you qualify for.

All of this to save face for a very stupid act on the part of the board of supervisors in the first place. If the dollars were really necessary they should have been instituted as a “tax.”

John Murphy
Franklin