ANDERSON — City residents could soon see a trash pickup fee of $10.75 a month added to their utility bills if the City Council adopts a trash fee ordinance once more.

The council on Thursday approved the ordinance on first and second readings. It will be placed on the agenda for next month’s meeting for its third and final reading.

Council members are considering the fee to make up for projected losses in the general fund caused primarily by statewide property tax caps. Financial consultant Jim Steele said the city would experience a $1.5 million shortfall in the general fund this year with the trash fee and a $2.1 million shortfall without it.

Next year, the shortfall is projected at $2.8 million with the fee and $4.4 million without it as property tax caps continue to decrease.

“This sounds pretty bleak, but if you look at projections from three months ago ... we’ve made significant improvement since that point in time,” said Steele, who served as city controller in the 1980s in the Thomas R. McMahan administration.

City officials have made budget cuts and are considering policies to cut back on labor costs to balance the budget.

The initial readings of the trash fee ordinance passed the council by an 8-3 vote with council members Art Pepelea, Rodney Chamberlain and David Eicks voting against it.

“You’re putting a lot of pressure on us to make a decision tonight,” Chamberlain said, asking that the matter be tabled until the next meeting.

Board of Works Chairman Greg Graham said a public hearing would be held before next month’s council meeting to allow Anderson residents to give their input to the ordinance before it was considered for its final reading.

Council President Rick Muir asked that the ordinance be amended from a $9.75 trash pickup fee to a $10.75 fee to account for recycling services. The original ordinance called for the lower fee and the deletion of recycling services, asking those who wanted to recycle to pay for their own services.

Graham said only about 10-15 percent of city residents recycled even though the city had been paying for those services for everyone.

“I would hope if this passes that we do a better job of getting people to do recycling,” Muir said.

Eicks said he opposed adding the trash fee altogether and wouldn’t vote for adding another dollar onto it when so few city residents recycled.

Instead, he proposed using the city’s buying power to take bids and find a preferred contractor residents could use to pick their own trash pickup plans.

“That way a 75-year-old woman that could have it picked up once a month would not be paying the same as a family of eight would pay,” he said.