Adams County taxpayers have more than one million reasons why they need to push county government to get serious about collecting delinquent garbage fees.

County Administrator Joe Murray said last week the county is owed more than $1 million in delinquent garbage collection fees.

That’s a staggering amount and one that illustrates why the system of collection needs to be changed.

Currently the county is working through the process of taking the worst offenders to court. Some of these folks allegedly have balances that date back to the 1980s.

While we applaud the county for working diligently to collect this much-needed public cash, we also suggest the problem will come back again in the future if we don’t fix it.

The county considered how it might add the collection fee onto property tax assessments a couple of years ago. The county eventually opted not to pursue that route out of fear it would anger large property owners, who in most cases do not create garbage that needs to be collected.

We understand that, but believe a better way must exist.

The county allegedly is also considering how it might accomplish a more aggressive collections process through the use of a special garbage assessment.

We encourage the county to fully explore how this system might work to eliminate the huge debts owed to the county from coming back in the future.

While we realize no system is perfect, we know something has to be done, as the current system clearly isn’t working well.