By Bill Cameron, WLS News

At a city budget hearing which began today, they’re already talking about changes to the most controversial money-raising proposal in the mayor’s bad news budget.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed $9.50 per month household garbage pickup fee may go up or down dependent upon how much garbage a household generates. City budget director Alex Holt told the alderman it might make sense to charge the fee per garbage cart at each home.

“If we went to a cart based fee structure, you could actually give people who, ya know, got the one cart and the one recycling, you could give them a discount off of the $9.50. The other way to do it is to say that everybody gets ‘x’ number of carts, say two per household and two recycling- I’m making that up, I’m not saying that’s the right number- and that anything more than that gets charged an additional fee,” said Holt.

But before anything changes the city is trying to figure out how many carts each household is using now.

@ 2015 WLS News