Nearly two years after voters allowed the city of San Diego to charge them for trash pickup, officials have wrapped up the first round of community meetings intended to collect feedback from residents and help shape the future of waste management.
These meetings are part of nearly $1.7 million that the city plans to spend on just community engagement. But controversy has surrounded the city’s hefty contract for a consultant to study the issue and conduct outreach, and residents who attended the meetings gave mixed reviews about their usefulness.
Beginning in early August, the city’s contractor launched “open house”-style public forums in each council district. These meetings were meant to educate the public about the city’s current trash services and survey residents on what kind of upgrades they’d like to see after voters in 2022 narrowly passed Measure B, a ballot measure that amended a century-old law to allow the city the option to charge San Diegans for trash collection service that they have been enjoying for free thus far.
Through its San Diego Documenters program, inewsource attended nearly all of the nine in-person sessions and spoke with attendees. While some said they found the sessions to be helpful and that their feedback was taken seriously, the Documenters also found:
- Lack of information regarding how much residents would potentially pay for trash pickup.
- Concerns over how certain neighborhoods could benefit over others and how lower-income residents would be impacted.
- Residents who wanted more advertisements of the meetings.
Fernando Flores, who attended the Aug. 5 meeting at the Logan Heights Library, said he didn’t learn much. Flores, who voted against Measure B, said he’s concerned that residents will be further burdened by a fee increase on top of the rising cost of living and a potential 1% sales tax increase measure that voters will decide in November.
But Bob Sly, who attended the Aug. 12 meeting at the Mira Mesa Public Library, said everything in those meetings had information meant “to be gleaned,” and if you “didn’t learn anything, then you just weren’t trying.”
Sly, who also serves as the media director for the nonprofit Zero Waste San Diego, said though he was already pretty knowledgeable about the city’s history and rules on trash collection, he still gained a better understanding of how property taxes are distributed throughout the city’s annual budget. The percentage that goes toward Environmental Services, the city’s department that handles trash, “is just minuscule and does not cover the actual service itself,” he said.
City staff did not answer inewsource’s request to respond to criticism of the public meetings. But officials told meeting attendees that they won’t determine how much they would charge for trash pickup until they’ve completed community outreach, and that they are discussing a program that could provide financial assistance to homeowners.
The community outreach makes up more than one-third of the city’s $4.5 million contract to HDR Engineering Inc., to study the trash fee. The city promoted the forums by including issuing news releases and launching a website that detailed meeting times and locations.
City officials say implementing a trash fee could free up the $73 million it spends annually on trash collection service for eligible residential properties, according to the contract. Commercial and large multi-family properties already pay private haulers, so their fees won’t be included in this study.
Advocates for Measure B have previously argued that implementing a fee would be a necessary step to improve the city’s current trash collection services, such as increasing recycling pickups to once a week and picking up larger items. Proponents also said the amendment to the law was long overdue because it gave some city residents an exclusive benefit of free trash services, but not others who must pay private haulers.
But opponents argued that homeowners already pay for trash service through their property taxes, which go to fund all city services. Some also asserted the ballot measure language was misleading, as it never clearly stated that they could receive a fee.
Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, who co-led the ballot measure with Councilmember Joe LaCava, has refuted claims of being intentionally misleading in the language, saying that “what might have been gained in clarity would have resulted in an additional rigidity that would be bad policy” if Measure B didn’t pass.
Officials are set to conduct two more rounds of community meetings intended to collect more input from San Diegans between now and December, according to the contract with HDR Engineering.
More details on the potential trash fee are expected to be discussed at future sessions. The meetings may be formatted in “in alternative forms,” according to the contract, so they may not be an open-house style for the next rounds.
The firm is slated to summarize feedback from the meetings and present to the city’s Executive Oversight Committee and at City Council or council committee meetings by August, according to the contract.
This story came from notes taken by Teal Davis, Carlos Moyeda and Simon Mayeski, San Diego Documenters who attended the city’s open house meetings about trash services. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings. Read more about the program here.
