Join the Trash Fee Legal Fight (at No Cost)

By Kate Callen / June 23, 2025

If you are furious because City Hall intends to get out of the fiscal mess it created by charging you unlawful trash fees, Mike Aguirre wants your help.

Aguirre is the lead attorney on a lawsuit seeking to block the trash fees on state constitutional grounds. He and co-counsel Maria Severson outlined the key legal issues to a packed forum on June 21 at the Mission Hills Library.

The 70 people who attended expected to be asked for donations. But Aguirre and Severson weren’t there for money. They wanted volunteers.

“To the extent you want to help us,” Aguirre said, “I want to use the Public Records Act to dig into the public records that are available to build a mountain of evidence to present to the judge. … We can’t take [the city] at their word. We need to find out all the particulars.”

Like the pension shakedown and the 101 Ash heist, the trash fee swindle has become another Enron-by-the-sea civic degradation. But what if this one turns out differently? What if, unlike before, the City’s lies and deceptions are clearly documented and dragged out into full public view?

Aguirre and Severson walked the audience through their case that the trash fees violate California’s Proposition 218, which limits the ability of local governments to impose taxes. “There are three reasons under the law that this tax increase should not go forward,” said Aguirre.

First, the City can only charge for the actual costs of trash collection, which still haven’t been determined. Second, the City cannot use trash collection fees to pay for anything else – like, say, storm drain clearing or street repair. Third, the collection of trash fees must be fair; people should only pay for services they need.

But the City’s campaign for the new fees was never about fairness, covering real costs, or actual need. It was all about financial desperation.

After Measure B passed narrowly on a pledge of low monthly fees, Severson said, “the City hired a very expensive expert to do a study that we believe was ‘results-driven’: ‘We need these numbers, we’ve got to somehow reverse-engineer the numbers to get what we need.’”

The City’s other craven (and likely illegal) maneuvers included tampering with the protest vote by burying it inside a mailer – “the more your rights are taken away, the smaller the type gets,” said Severson – charging for services before they are delivered, and misleading the public with extravagant promises.

“They were like Oprah,” said Severson. “You get a new can! And you get a new can!”

The reverse-engineering and PR experts weren’t cheap. HDR Engineering Inc. conducted the trash fee study for a whopping $4.5 million. Cook + Schmid received a full $1 million for marketing and outreach. (Principals of both firms will likely be deposed for the lawsuit.)

So an effort to replenish city coffers began by shelling out $5.5 million. For a local government that’s teetering on bankruptcy, San Diego sure likes to spend money.

On Tuesday, June 25, Aguirre and Severson will go to court to ask for an expedited schedule. “We have the public records and the staff reports,” Aguirre said. “We know how they came up with the numbers. We know how they sold it to you.”

Instead of assigning the case to one of the City Attorney’s 350 staff lawyers, the City is spending even more money that it doesn’t have by hiring JarvisFay LLP, a costly Oakland firm that defends local governments in Prop 218 cases.

Aguirre and Severson will hold a meeting for volunteers at their downtown offices. Once trained, citizen researchers can work at home and deliver their findings through a drop box access.

This will involve a lot more work that signing a form and mailing it off in a stamped envelope. But it will be much more satisfying. And it could have a far greater impact.