In November 2022, San Diego voters ed Measure B by a squeaker 50.5% vote, allowing the city of San Diego to charge approximately 223,000 single-family homeowners a fee for trash pickup. It wasn’t as though homeowners previously got “free” service. It was considered to be part of our property tax bill.
The proposed fee for typical single-family homeowners was initially projected to be $23-$29 per month. Now that the new fees are about to be implemented, they are proposed to be more than double the $23 amount — even triple or more if you have more than three Department of Environmental Services bins — and going up probably in perpetuity. La Jollans, whose larger properties tend to generate more yard waste, will be especially affected.
Nobody voted for this. Not even the people who voted for it voted for this. The proposed new system isn’t just bait and switch, it’s bait and switch and extort.
The affected property owners have until Monday, June 9, to protest the new fee system. But more than 50% will have to do so by the deadline. Read below to see how (it’s actually very easy).
Failure to return the protest form is considered a “yes” vote for the new trash fees.
Allegedly, all affected homeowners received a six-page flier regarding the new rules on or about April 25. I say “allegedly” because even though I was alerted to it and was on the lookout for it, we apparently did not receive it. Many other people threw it away thinking it was junk mail. Fortunately, you can resurrect it with this link: sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2025-04/measure-b-prop-218-mailer.pdf.
Reading through all six pages will make your head explode. Honestly, whoever designed this mind-numbing, incomprehensible plan should be banished to an island where they will hopefully be devoured by wildlife.
But on the sixth and last page — where they probably hope you have already lost your will to live during the first five pages and will never ever see it — is a protest form that asks for your name, address or parcel number and signature. It must be mailed to the address on the form or hand-delivered by June 9 to be counted. Only one form may be submitted for each owned parcel.
Please, please do this. Even if you are OK with paying for trash pickup, this is a terrible plan.
One important note about the protest form: The city clerk’s office, upon query, stated: “For properties held in trust, the protest should be signed by the trustee or other person legally authorized to act on behalf of the trust, and it should include the name of the trust as it is listed on the last equalized secured property tax assessment roll.”
Also, protests submitted by email, fax or as a photocopy (i.e., the signature is a photocopy) will not be counted.
But nowhere is this information included on the actual protest form, which has no mention of including a trust name. Will they not count forms sent in that only include the name of the owner and not the trust info? Could/should this be a disqualifier of the entire proposed plan?
Among the many, many things wrong with the new plan is that the fees would show up on your property tax bill so the city doesn’t have to pay for billing. Corrections or credits to fees will take a full year to show up on your next year’s tax bill. So if you sell your property, will the new owners be the beneficiaries of your credits?
Measure B made no mention of requiring people to choose among three “bundles,” depending on the size of Environmental Services containers you have or need, with each additional bin an additional fee. But you have to pay for three containers regardless.
Table 1 on page 4 of the flier shows the increase in costs of the three bundles and add-on bins for the next four years. The cost of each of the bundles goes up 5% from 2025-26, a whopping 19% from 2026-27 and an additional 3-4% from 2027-28. No mention of fees from 2029 into forever.
My current two 95-gallon green organic waste bins and one 95-gallon black trash bin fall into Bundle 3. Adding my two 35-gallon blue recycling bins (which, by the way, I paid for personally since Environmental Services hasn’t supplied that size in years) would be an additional $13.88 per month, making my 2025 monthly costs $61.47, my 2026 monthly costs $63.91, my 2027 monthly costs $73.30 and my 2028 monthly costs $75.12.
I could probably downsize the 95-gallon black bin to a 65-gallon one, but the chaos this would likely inflict on my tax bill — never mind the hold time with all the new customer service people — probably isn’t worth it. I just don’t think I have the mental bandwidth.
And it gets even worse than this. Part of the cost being assessed is for replacing all the current black and blue bins, regardless of condition, with new bins “equipped with special computer chips to allow the city to keep track of customers.”
What? Even my trash is spying on me now? Just what kind of “track” are they going to be keeping?
And what about the two almost-new 35-gallon recycling bins I had to purchase after the city trash trucks destroyed the two the city had originally dispensed to me but no longer provides that size? Are they now obsolete?
And what happens to the tens of thousands of blue and black bins being replaced?
Ironically, the taxpayers paid over $4 million for a “study” of this situation and to estimate the costs of this program. The San Diego-Union Tribune quoted Jordan More, the analyst for the independent budget analyst’s office who created the wildly inaccurate estimates, as saying “Mea culpa — I am human.”
Is this the new national mantra? I can hear my parents’ voices from their graves: “Human is a given. Ineptitude is not.” Are 223,000 single-family homeowners supposed to be paying for this mistake in perpetuity?
To be slightly fair, there are some new benefits with this plan, including free replacement of our bins after the trash trucks destroy them instead of having to pay for them, as is currently the case. I’m not sure why this would matter, as nowhere in the “proposed service changes” is the promise to create trucks that don’t destroy the containers in the first place. Do we really need that much velocity?
The new fees will, however, give us weekly recycling pickup instead of alternating weeks. We’ll also get curbside pickup of “up to two bulky items per year.” Frankly, I could do without both of those for the money being charged.
I was amused to read that the new fees will provide “customer service representatives to meet the anticipated increased demand in inquiries.” Do ya think? If you need six pages and multiple footnotes to describe a new “bundles” system, you can be sure you’re going to get plenty of calls.
Another use of the new fees, you’ll be pleased to hear, is for “saving to prepare for future costs and reserves.” Yup, thrilled to be paying for that. I’ll probably be dead!
As noted above, even the people who voted for this didn’t vote for what is being proposed now that the city secured voter approval.
If enough affected property owners file protests in time, the current proposed solid-waste management fee will be canceled — or at least revisited. And it should be.
As a poster on local social media noted:
“Voters can’t give informed consent if the information they are given is wrong or incomplete. Proposition campaigns must be based on clear, accurate information. If the government lowballs the cost during the election and raises it afterward, it damages public trust. Ethically, a government that misleads voters should not be allowed to profit from that deception. When voters make decisions based on false expectations, the result does not reflect the true will of the people.
“Measure B’s implementation should either be canceled or require a revote — this time with full disclosure of the real financial impacts. Voters deserved honest information when making their choice, and they didn’t get it.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Inga’s looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at [email protected]. ♦
