A sharply divided San Diego City Council voted 6-3 Monday to impose the city’s first fee for trash collection at single-family homes, despite complaints the $43.60 monthly charge is much higher than earlier estimates.
The vote came shortly after City Clerk Diana Fuentes determined that a protest against the new fee had failed to get enough . Residents turned in just over 46,000 protest cards — well short of the 113,000 necessary.
ers said the fee will help San Diego close a large budget deficit, lengthen the life of the Miramar landfill by boosting recycling rates and eliminate an unfair situation for people living in condos and apartments.
For decades, all taxpayers in the city have funded free trash pickup service that’s only available to single-family properties or multifamily properties with less than five units. Most condos and apartments must pay private haulers.
“We focused on creating a level playing field across the city,” Council President Joe LaCava said of the coalition that s the fee.
Critics pointed out that the monthly fee, which will rise to $55 in summer 2027, is much higher than the $23-to-$29 estimate voters were given before they approved a 2022 ballot measure to let the city to start recovering its costs for trash pickup.
“I hate to say it, but I think this is a bait and switch, and that’s why I am voting no,” said Councilmember Raul Campillo, predicting Monday’s fee approval will make voters distrustful. “Any idea we ask the public to approve will undoubtedly be rejected for the foreseeable future.”
Critics also complained that many residents, especially senior citizens, produce very little trash but won’t be given the option of declining service or receiving service less frequently than every week.
The city is, however, giving residents who are willing to use smaller trash bins — 35 gallons, instead of the normal 95 gallons — significant discounts because they produce less waste.
Those customers will pay $32.82 per month, which will rise to $40.57 in two years. Prices for all customers will rise significantly in summer 2027 because the city will add weekly recycling and bulky trash pickup at that time.
ers also stressed that the city has set aside $3 million in general fund money for a subsidy program that could provide a 50% subsidy for about 8,000 customers or a 20% subsidy for about 23,000 customers.
Council are expected to decide details of the subsidy program in coming days. Eligibility will likely be based on enrollment in state or federal financial assistance programs.
Councilmember Henry Foster voted against the fee even though he said he believes the inaccurate estimate from 2022, created by the city’s independent budget analyst, was an honest mistake.
“There was no ill intent,” Foster said. “I truly, truly do believe that.”
Foster said he was unhappy with the process San Diego officials used to determine what the fee would be. He was ed in opposition by Campillo and Councilmember Marni von Wilpert.
The council in were LaCava, Sean Elo-Rivera, Jennifer Campbell, Kent Lee, Stephen Whitburn and Vivian Moreno.
Many of them said a key motivation was a concern that not approving the fee would force the council to make somewhere between $30 million and $80 million in additional cuts to a budget that already has more than $100 million in cuts.
That’s because the city spends about $80 million in general fund money on trash service, so imposing no fee at all would require $80 million in cuts. A fee of $29 — the high end of the 2022 estimate — would require $30 million in new cuts elsewhere in the budget.
“We need to be able to collect this fee in order to continue quality service for our residents and to do right by our city,” Campbell said.
Lee agreed.
“Today’s vote is going to have a direct impact on tomorrow’s final budget consideration,” he said. “Eighty million dollars — that is, I think, very hard even for the IBA to fathom.”
Campillo offered a much different perspective.
He criticized the protest process as unfair, particularly because property owners who fail to cast a ballot count as “yes” votes on the new fee.
“No reasonable person would believe that failing to return their no vote would default to a yes vote,” Campillo said.
He also challenged the fairness argument between single-family homes versus apartment and condo residents. “Twenty-two percent of detached single-family homes we are about to charge have renters in them,” he said.
But Campillo’s main focus was on the fee being so much higher than the 2022 proposal.
In response, he proposed a new policy that would require San Diego to thoroughly study any potential new fees before even placing them on a ballot.
“Asking voters to a measure with estimates is not good practice,” he said. “The council should ensure that we practice planning ahead instead of catching up.”
Elo-Rivera stressed the environmental benefits of the new fee, noting that every environmental organization in the region has endorsed it.
The new set-up doubles the frequency of recycling pickups, from once every two weeks to once a week, and provides incentives to produce less trash and recycle more — discounts for using small cans.
The city’s recycling rate is only 68%, far below the 82% the city’s climate action plan calls for by 2030.
The new fee puts San Diego roughly in the middle of the pack of California cities that provide trash service. The fee is higher than what Fresno and Bakersfield charge but less than Pasadena, Oxnard, Los Angeles and Sacramento.
Most cities use private haulers, which typically charge less than San Diego’s new fee.
The new fee was reduced by nearly 18% since February, when city officials released an initial proposal to charge full-service customers $53 per month.
The council’s vote came after several hours of public testimony, most of it against the new fee.
“It is an outrageous idea to steal even more money from homeowners — many of whom are elderly retirees on very tight, fixed budgets — to pay for your broken system,” said resident Karen Flynn.
Meg Sutherland-Smith said the fee is simply too high.
“I agree with some fee-based trash collection, but not at the current rate,” she said. “The proposed services that the fee is supposed to cover are of no benefit to the majority of residents.”
Rick Fry, pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Allied Gardens, praised the new fee.
“If we want to keep our libraries and parks open for our children, such as Lake Murray Park, we need to approve this trash fee,” he said. “Otherwise we are allowing single-family homeowners to get subsidized trash service.”
The 226,495 properties eligible for city service will be asked to select what size trash bin they want between July 15 and September. Delivery of new bins will start in October and last through next summer.
On June 24, the council is scheduled to approve a plan to collect the new fee along with property taxes.
