‘Definitely still chaotic’: San Diego relaxes trash rules, with service still up in the air for thousands
With key deadlines looming for San Diego’s transition away from free trash service, city officials are making last-minute rule changes while many residents scramble to figure out what their new service will look like.
Fewer than half of the roughly 20,000 properties declared newly ineligible for city service have managed to secure new service from private haulers, prompting a rule change to incentivize the haulers to offer better deals.
The new rule, signed by Mayor Todd Gloria on Monday, allows haulers to avoid long-standing penalties for low recycling rates if they simply do more to encourage customers to recycle with education and outreach efforts.
The rule change comes after weeks of property owners and homeowners associations either getting rejected by haulers who say they lack enough trucks and workers to take on new customers or getting offered rates far higher than expected.
Property owners have been trying to get discounts by switching from individual cans to dumpsters, giving up organic recycling pickups or teaming with nearby properties to lure haulers with better economies of scale.
Meanwhile, fewer than a quarter of the 225,000 properties that are eligible for city trash service have gone to the city’s website to select their bin size and establish an online trash account.
The deadline to make those decisions is Sept. 30, because city officials plan to start delivering new bins Oct. 6. Customers who don’t make a choice will automatically get the largest bins and most expensive monthly service.
The deadline for the newly ineligible customers to secure service from private haulers was Sept. 1, but more than 10,000 of those 19,776 customers have yet to do so.
The city is continuing to pick up trash from those customers, but that won’t last forever because the city is spending millions on what amounts to free service for them.
“At some point, there may be a citation with a fee,” said Jeremy Bauer, assistant director of the city’s Environmental Services Department.
Bauer estimated the city will spend as much as $5 million serving such customers beyond when their eligibility for city trash service ended.
But Bauer said last week that there are reasons for optimism.
The new rule was created at the request of the private haulers, which are sometimes reluctant to add new customers in apartments or condominiums because higher resident turnover typically comes with lower recycling rates.
“We haven’t wanted to create a situation where these haulers are penalized for taking on these customers,” he said. “We saw this as an opportunity to try something new.”
If recycling rates dip sharply under the rule change, city officials will know not to include the change when they negotiate new deals with the haulers two years from now, Bauer said.
An association representing local haulers predicted on Friday that the rule change will make a big difference.
“The new regulation gives us the flexibility to address the few unique cases that remain, and while it may take a bit longer, we’re committed to ensuring no one is left behind,” said Jim Madaffer, executive director of the San Diego County Disposal Association.
Madaffer noted that the haulers have managed to transition nearly 10,000 properties in a relatively short amount of time.
Even before the new rule, Bauer stressed that the number of newly ineligible customers securing new service from private haulers was on the rise.
The numbers rose from 7,991 to more than 9,500 in the week prior to the rule change.
“We are seeing an acceleration,” Bauer said. “We are seeing good progress.”
Robin Allen, a property manager who handles four complexes declared newly ineligible for city trash service, agrees progress has been made recently.
She has secured trash service for all of her complexes, but it took weeks of negotiations, rejections, confusion and then more negotiations. And she now faces a new potential round of negotiations.
She secured monthly service at $81 per unit from Ware Disposal for two of her complexes but more recently got monthly service at $47.47 from EDCO for her other two.
Allen said she’d like to move the complexes that made deals with Ware to EDCO to get the $47.47 rate, which is less than 10% higher than the city’s full-service monthly rate of $43.60.
“We’re looking into switching over,” she said. “Things are definitely still chaotic. We’re still learning new things every day.”
Other complexes have managed to knock offers from haulers down from roughly $80 a month to somewhere in the $65 range by making concessions — most commonly switching to dumpsters.
But some properties don’t have enough space for a dumpster, or lack an opening for a truck to access a dumpster and haul away its contents. Another option is agreeing to locate all cans in one spot on trash day.
Others have offered to give up organics recycling, which private haulers aren’t required to provide under city rules.
Bauer said he encourages property owners and homeowners associations to work with trash brokers to secure better deals. He said many of the best deals he’s heard about came with help from brokers.
He also suggests property owners join up with others nearby, because haulers focused on efficiency are sometimes reluctant to add service in neighborhoods where they don’t have many other customers.
“One single, individual home will cost more than if a hauler is able to contract with a number of homes because of economies of scale,” Bauer said.
Bruce Maigatter, who lives in a 10-unit complex in Bankers Hill that was declared newly ineligible, said he thinks the city should shift away from having haulers compete for business and simply choose one hauler for the entire city.
“Having many different companies pick up in different neighborhoods is wasteful of gas since multiple companies’ trucks will drive the same route every week with fewer stops,” he said.
Bauer said the city could not legally make such a switch for at least five years.
He said a key city concern is the relatively low rate of customers eligible for city service who have gone to the city’s website to create an account and select a container size.
Of 225,119 eligible customers, only about 55,000 have signed up online. That leaves about 170,000 who haven’t signed up with less than three weeks before the Sept. 30 deadline.
Bauer said he suspects some customers decided not to make a selection because they know the default is 95-gallon cans, which are the largest and most popular choice and cost $43.60 per month.
People who choose 65-gallon cans pay $38.94 per month, and people who choose 35-gallon cans pay $32.82 per month.
Bauer said 95-gallon cans were chosen as the default for people who don’t make a selection because they have previously been the most common choice.
He said customers should still sign up even if they want the default 95-gallon cans, because they can order extra cans if they need them. He said they can also sign up for alerts about shredding events, service changes because of holidays and other key information.
The city plans to use door hangers in coming weeks to make sure they are reaching the renters of single-family homes. Bauer said the owners of those homes might not have informed tenants they need to select their cans.
“I believe there is a sizeable number of renters who may not know,” he said.
City officials are close to deciding how they will subsidize low-income customers’ city trash service, Bauer added.
The City Council provided $3 million for such a subsidy, which could cover a full subsidy for roughly 3,500 customers, a 50 percent subsidy for about 7,000 customers or a smaller subsidy for a much larger number of customers.
Bauer said his best guess is that the city will use a combination of a medium-sized subsidy coupled with full subsidies for a small number of customers with special circumstances.
While property owners are being billed according to monthly rates, they will pay the city only twice per year as part of property tax bills each November and April.
Some property owners have sued the city arguing the trash fee violates the state constitution by exceeding the city’s costs.
Bauer said it’s possible the subsidy could apply to upcoming property tax bills. In addition to the $3 million, city trash customers who have created accounts have donated about $30,000 on the city’s website to help fellow customers with financial needs.
“In addition to paying for service for the first time, a number of San Diegans have stepped up to say, ‘I want to donate to help my neighbors who need assistance,’” he said.
The city’s current trash predicament traces back to Measure B, a successful 2022 city ballot measure that ended the decades-long practice of San Diego providing no-fee trash service to single-family homes and many small townhome and apartment complexes.
When determining how much to charge city customers, officials discovered they had been providing no-fee service to about 20,000 homes that should not have been eligible. Those former customers must now work with private haulers, which had previously handled only the city’s businesses and larger apartment and condo complexes.
In addition, nearly 800 properties that hadn’t been receiving city service for various reasons were determined to be eligible.
Originally Published: