How much should San Diego charge for trash pickup? City moves toward a $4.5 million study to decide

The city of San Diego took a key step this week toward charging single-family homeowners for trash and recycling services after decades of not doing so.

The City Council’s Environment Committee voted 3-0 on Feb. 15 to approve paying a consultant $4.5 million to study how much to charge customers, whether to add new services and what discounts customers should get for producing less trash.

The proposed deal with consultant HDR Engineering must be approved by the full council, possibly next month.

But some council members raised concerns about plans to handle trash billing in-house, the higher-than-expected price tag for the consultant’s study and plans to adjust trash services based on a series of neighborhood forums.

The proposed deal comes 15 months after city voters approved Measure B, which amended a 1919 law called the People’s Ordinance that had prohibited the city from charging for trash pickup at single-family homes.

Measure B’s supporters say it is expected to create a roughly $80 million windfall in new annual revenue for the city once nearly 300,000 single-family customers start paying monthly trash and recycling fees in summer 2026.

But now that the city is allowed to begin charging those customers, it must figure out which services they want while making sure it doesn’t violate state law by charging more than it costs to deliver those services.

That complex process is why the contract with the consultant costs so much more than the roughly $1 million that council members were expecting, according to Renee Robertson, who oversees trash collection as the city’s environmental services director.

“What’s unique about this process is that this is the first time we are evaluating services and setting rates,” Robertson said. “This is a significant change that requires time, thoughtfulness and a continuous focus on customer experience.”

Councilman Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, agreed, saying: “We’re really looking at the whole spectrum of what we could do. You really have to button it down from every direction.”

Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell criticized plans to gather feedback on trash and recycling services at forums in each of the city’s nine council districts. That effort is the centerpiece of a $1.7 million outreach campaign the consultant is planning.

“Very few people come to these meetings,” Campbell said. “It’s a waste of staff time and money.”

She suggested it would be more cost-effective to conduct a poll of residents.

But Randy Wilde, an aide to Mayor Todd Gloria, said a thorough process is necessary to avoid lawsuits accusing the city of violating Proposition 218, which says government agencies can’t charge more for a service than it costs.

“This is brand-new territory for the city,” Wilde said. “It’s very likely this will be litigated. There will be a lot of questions about ‘Is the city being as efficient as possible?’ before we levy these new fees.”

He contended the $4.5 million will be well-spent.

Issues for the consultant to consider are whether the city should add new services, such as regular pickups for bulky trash and hazardous waste, or shift recycling pickups from every two weeks to every week.

A potentially larger challenge will be designing a “pay-as-you-throw” program that would mean lower bills for people who produce less trash and higher bills for those who produce the most trash. City officials say such a program would help achieve San Diego’s goal of net-zero waste by 2035.

The city’s independent budget analyst said in fall 2022 that a rough estimate of monthly bills for single-family homes would fall between $23 and $29 if all of the 285,000 households that had been getting no-fee service were charged equally.

But bills almost certainly will be higher because of inflation since then and because the IBA’s analysis didn’t account for increased service levels and the need to create a new city billing bureaucracy.

City leaders, however, say there is no guarantee they will charge residents the full cost of the service. They’ve also said monthly charges might be slowly raised up to full cost recovery and that low-income residents and senior citizens may get subsidies.

Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert said San Diego should outsource trash billing based on years of complaints about billing problems in the city’s water and sewer divisions.

“It’s been a huge mess and it’s not going to get better any time soon,” von Wilpert said. She noted that the Fire-Rescue Department chose to outsource billing last year when it took over city ambulance service.

If the proposed deal with the consultant is approved by the full council, it calls for HDR Engineering to hold community forums during the second half of this year, create a proposal for a rate structure in early 2025 and present that structure to the council for approval in summer 2025.

Campbell said she wants the city to stop providing no-fee trash pickup to single-family homes as soon as possible.

“There are other things we can’t fund because of it, whereas other cities don’t have this burden on their budget,” she said.

— La Jolla Light staff contributed to this report. ◆