The Boston City Council is considering a solution to unsafe streets only it could love: slap a tax on delivery food orders.

Drivers for DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats have raised the ire of Boston and its leaders for months.

Last June,  Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox and Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge sent a letter to executives from DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Technologies that described an “alarming increase in unlawful and dangerous operation of motorcycles, mopeds and motorized scooters” by their food delivery drivers.

Many of those drivers are operating unregistered vehicles, the letter stated. The two city officials also described witnessing other violations that included running red lights, driving on city sidewalks, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, speeding, and collisions.

The solution was simple: Violations, the letter stated, may result in fines, loss of license or vehicle seizure.

It’s roughly the same consequences that would hit anyone driving dangerously.

But some Boston City Councilors think that adding a 15-cent fee to food orders is the answer. They want the fee as a potential amendment to a “road safety and accountability for delivery providers ordinance” proposed by Mayor Michelle Wu.

Wu’s ordinance is also straightforward: “crack down on dangerous operations by delivery workers using motorcycles, mopeds and motorized scooters.”

The ordinance requires those delivery companies to obtain umbrella liability insurance coverage for all workers utilizing their platform in order to receive a permit to operate in Boston. The policy must cover all workers, regardless of what vehicle they use to make deliveries, Wu wrote in a letter to the City Council last month. And it will look to secure data from companies that documents “unsafe and illegal operations by delivery drivers” on Boston roads, which the mayor says will ensure safer streets and “help the city hold these companies accountable.”

So what would the Council’s potential fee do?

“It would theoretically be a 15-cent per order fee that would help cover costs of the enforcement of the ordinance,” Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata told the Herald.

Is the city planning to hire more traffic police? What costs would be “covered” by the proposed fee?

And, just as importantly, who would really be paying that fee?

“This will make delivery more expensive in the city and discourages consumers from ordering and doing business with restaurants in Boston,” Stephen Clark, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, wrote in letters to Wu and the City Council last week.

Councilor Ed Flynn gets it: “Although I support much of the proposed ordinance, I will vote against it based on a new tax that will ultimately be passed on to restaurants and the public,”  he said in a statement to the Herald. “It’s not the time for a new tax in Boston. We must demonstrate fiscal discipline and responsibility.”

We must, but that doesn’t mean we will. Fiscal discipline in Boston is something deftly avoided by our leaders, as nimbly as side-stepping a delivery bike.

Editorial cartoon by Al Goodwyn (Creators Syndicate)