The City of San Diego Wants Your Credit Card
This past month, residents from the City of San Diego attended a meeting with Attorneys Mike Aguirre and Maria Severson, who are representing plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in opposition to the Environmental Services Department trash fee, sighting that it is unconstitutional. The meeting was held at the Mission Hills-Hillcrest Library community center that was filled to capacity.
During the meeting Aguirre and Severson shared their list of ten reasons that the trash fee is flawed:
- This past year, the city cut 68,000 households from its trash service list. Instead of 285,000 households, the city will only serve 224,485. That’s 25 percent less. Shouldn’t the costs go down by 25 percent?
- If the city is servicing 25 percent less customers, it logically follows the city is responsible for collecting and disposing of 25 percent less tons of trash.
- The city says its trash costs are nearly double from last year, from approximately $90 million in fiscal year 2025 all the way to $147 million for fiscal year 2026. Why the significant increase?
- The city wants to buy new trucks and hire more employees to provide trash services. With 25 percent less customers, why isn’t the city downsizing its trash service department?
- The city says they are only going to collect $118 million this year. However, the City’s cost of service study admits the city will attempt to collect $133 million in fiscal year 2027, $164 million in fiscal year 2028, and $172 million in fiscal year 2029. The amount to be collected per household is slated to skyrocket annually.
- The city says it will spend around $35 million this year alone for disposal costs for trash, recycling, and organics. The city based that number from the tipping (dumping) fee it charges, from between $80 to $200 per ton. The city is charging private haulers $20 per ton and will charge them $25 next year. Why is the city vastly overstating its disposal costs?
- The city has admitted in public presentations that the Environmental Services Department disposes of 300,000 tons of trash from San Diegans every year. If we multiply that by $25 per ton, then the City’s disposal costs are $7.5 million at most. That’s a huge discrepancy.
- The city has spent $7 million on consultants to justify spending several extra hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years. Only $800,000 was spent on the firm that created the cost-of-service study. Why the discrepancy?
- $720,000 was spent on public relations (PR) consultants. Among its expenses, the PR consultants charged for “outreach and engagement support” including training city staff with “techniques for calming emotions during stressful encounters.” Why did the city waste taxpayer dollars on this training?
- For this fiscal year, the city is charging the same 95-gallon rate, even if you chose a lower service level before the new trash bins were distributed. Isn’t that illegal, charging again for services that we do not need nor use?
One of the many reasons we should be concerned, beyond the list of ten above, is because the city has applied our annual trash fees to county property taxes. This means the city will treat our property taxes like a credit card and can increase the costs without reasoning and our permission. The lawsuit is about addressing how poorly and improperly the city initiated this effort to charge homeowners for trash service that isn’t based on true cost for services.
Unfortunately, the plaintiffs are forced to take a stand for all San Diegans so that fees and taxes are based on real costs for services delivered and property taxes aren’t the city’s credit card to use at their discretion.
A Motion of Summary Judgement Hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m., Thursday, April 9 in courtroom 75 on the sixth floor of the San Diego Hall of Justice Building, located at 330 West Broadway in downtown San Diego. The plaintiffs are expected to attend and invite concerned citizens to also attend.
The city wants to halt the Trash Fee lawsuit with the defense that there are no “disputed facts” on this case. The presiding judge will decide whether to dismiss the case or allow it to go forward on the scheduled court date of May 1, 2026.
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