By Geoff Page / June 25, 2025
When I read about the coming trash fee issue back in February, I decided to do the simple math to see how much trash collection actually costs per household. I needed two crucial pieces of information. How many households received city trash pick-up in 2023? And what did that pick-up cost?
To get the information, I submitted a Public Records Request (PRR) on February 26. The California Public Records Act (PRA) created a process for citizens to access public information. An OB Rag article I wrote that ran on October 6, 2023 explained what the PRA is and how to make a PRR in San Diego.
https://obrag.org/2023/10/how-to-make-a-public-records-request/
I sent a request for budget documents that showed two things: the number of households that were serviced by the city trash pick-up program in 2023 and the total budget for city trash pick-up in 2023.
The PRA allows an agency 10 days to provide a response to a PRR. Under certain conditions, the law allows the responding agency to take an additional 14 days. That is 24 days total. As of June 23, the city has taken 117 days and counting. That is nearly 5 times the number of days allowable by law.
The City of San Diego is clearly in gross violation of the state PRA. This is not news to local professional journalists and news organizations. Many have had to actually sue the city to make it comply.
The city has taken illegal extension after illegal extension on this request. To take the extra 14 days, the PRA states:
“7922.535 (b) In unusual circumstances, the time limit prescribed in this article and Article 1 (commencing with Section 7922.500) may be extended by written notice from the head of the agency or a designee to the person making the request, setting forth the reasons for the extension and the date on which a determination is expected to be dispatched. No notice shall specify a date that would result in an extension for more than 14 days.”
One 14-day extension. “In unusual circumstances.”
Here is what the city does with every request. At the 10-day deadline, the city automatically sends out an email stating it will need an additional 14 days. For every request, not just “unusual circumstances.” But the unlawful intransigence doesn’t stop there.
Every 14 days, an email arrives from the city setting a new delivery date 14 days later. So far, the city has sent me extension notice emails on March 7, March 21, April 11, April 25, May 16, May 30, June 6, and June 23. That is eight consecutive extensions – seven more than state law allows.
The information requested is not complicated. All the trash information has been front and center in the run-up to the City Council’s June 9 vote to charge the new fee. These eight extensions were clearly a stall.
The city did not want to cough up this information before the vote. Now the vote is over, and they still do not want to comply.
We all need to know how much it actually cost the city per household for trash service in 2023 versus what they want to charge now. Perhaps someone else has this information and would like to share it.
Meanwhile, the city still has a legal responsibility to fulfill its obligation under state law by honoring my legitimate Public Records Request.
I’m waiting.
Geoff, the official city budget for 2024-25 contains the Department of Environmental Services official numbers which show they spent about $71 million on trash collection this year and a little over $74 million last year. The city RFP for the consultant, found in the contracts web page, used the number $73 million in 2024, and estimated 280,000 households.
I used the city’s numbers in my campaign and was highly amused to hear Kirby Brady say she didn’t know where those figures came from.
If you want the documents and are not motivated to search for them, email me and I will link you to the Google Drive we set up with all the pertinent city docs.
Marty,
Thanks for pitching in and contributing on this.
I’ve never trusted budget numbers, I prefer to see actual numbers. But, I went back and looked at the 2024-25 budget. I was surprised to see the word “Actual” in the 2023 column when the 2024 and 2025 columns had the word “Budget.” So, going back did get me the actual collections cost for 2023.
The next piece is the actual number of households. Jeff Hamblin, whom I believe you know, had estimates around the 240k range. That is also an estimate. I want a hard actual number from the city, which should be easy to cough up. However, using these numbers is revealing.
$63,682,327 in costs divided by 280,000 households comes to $227.44 per year, or $18.95 per month. Using the lower estimate of 240,000 households, the yearly cost comes to $265.34, or $22.11 per month.
The fee the city voted to impose makes no sense in view of these numbers.
As far as I can tell that count doesn’t even cover all of the single-family homes in city limits. Let alone the 2 to 4 unit complexes that would require separate trash service for each unit.
Something doesn’t add up. Also, ESD has a database of the addresses that bins are issued to. No doubt there is probably lots of junk data in it but the fact that they have no clue and needed a $5 million consultant fee to figure this all out is ridiculous.
Geoff,
I think the best estimate of the number of households (dwelling units) getting city trash service before Measure B is between 302,000 and 312,000 (which would be between 242,200 and 246,600 parcels (APNs), effectively billable “customers” under the property tax billing scheme).
The budget amounts for ESD haven’t varied much from the later posted actual amounts. So the current FY25 ESD collection budget of $71 million is close enough for estimates. That would give a cost range, per household, of $228 to $235 per year, or $18.96 to $19.59 per month.
Of course now the city wants to add in a bunch of things to arrive at what they consider a true cost, which took it up to about $90 million. That still produces a cost under $25 per month per household.
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Background on where my numbers come from for those interested.
I have spent several months doing GIS analysis of the parcel data in conjunction with the Waste Management and municipal code regulations to build a picture of city trash service both before and after Measure B’s changes. I have subsequently revised it as the city released data. To public records requests, at the preliminary trash hearings, and the final data released for the June 9th hearing.
The city has never had anything near a precise count of its served properties or households, since it was not charging for the service and was obligated to collect trash from any household of any type that could place standard carts on a public street or alley. Going back 20 years ago or before, it was common to see count estimates above 300,000 customers in the ESD document archives. But estimates stopped being provided in more recent years, and were often ambiguous as to whether they were describing lots or parcels (“customers”), or households. Until the decision was made to charge fees it didn’t really matter, and it helped keep cost down by not bothering with it.
To produce counts for the cost-of-service study, the city went through a GIS process similar to what I performed. They did have access to additional internal data for cart registration and other purposes. They outlined this process in an “Eligibility_Memorandum.pdf” that was supplied at the June 9th council hearing. It contains their final counts, which match the separate “ESD_List_of_Eligible_APNs.pdf” also provided.
=== The ESD counts from the June 9th memo ===
Before Measure B
Properties Getting Service: 242,264 (APNs), 301,725 (Units)
After Measure B
Eligible Properties: 226,495 (APNs), 256,819 (Units)
Measure B Changes
Ineligible, Transitioning off of city service: 20,365 (APNs), 56,051 (Units)
Eligible, Transitioning to city service: 835 (APNs), 1,570 (Units)
=== My Analysis incorporating latest ESD data ===
Before Measure B
City Served Properties:
TOTAL: 229,415 (Lots), 246,604 (APNs), 312,444 (Units)
Single-family (incl some ADUs): 200,267 (Lots), 200,319 (APNs), 200,234 (Units), 64% of Served Units
Multi-family 2 units or more: 24,321 (Lots), 25,548 (APNs), 85,690 (Units), 27%
Condos: 2,775 (Lots), 14,597 (APNs), 14,721 (Units), 5%
Mixed-use Multi-family: 223 (Lots), 235 (APNs), 2,877 (Units), 1%
Other (Small Business etc): 1,830 (Lots), 5,905 (APNs), 8,921 (Units), 3%
==
After Measure B
Eligible Properties:
TOTAL: 222,424 (Lots), 226,238 (APNs), 256,393 (Units)
Single-family (incl some ADUs): 199,944 (Lots), 199,972 (APNs), 199,924 (Units), 78% of Eligible Units
Multi-family 2 to 4 units: 20,392 (Lots), 20,399 (APNs), 50,593 (Units), 20%
Condo 1 to 4 units: 2,088 (Lots), 5,867 (APNs), 5,876 (Units), 2%
==
Ejected from city service due to Measure B’s new rules
(4-unit limit, no mixed-use, no small business, etc.)
Ejected TOTAL: 6,991 (Lots), 20,366 (APNs), 56,051 (Units)
Single-family (incl some ADUs): 323 (Lots), 347 (APNs), 310 (Units)
Multi-family: 3,929 (Lots), 5,149 (APNs), 35,097 (Units)
Condo: 687 (Lots), 8,730 (APNs), 8,845 (Units)
Mixed-use: 223 (Lots), 235 (APNs), 2,877 (Units)
Other (Small Business etc): 1,830 (Lots), 5,905 (APNs), 8,921 (Units)
===============
The source map images and summary tables are available here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XW1U9jLtYbXPV888Utb6ADw8XA13y3QD
Great information, Jeff, you really have done some hard work on the data. Your number is even lower than mine at “$18.96 to $19.59 per month.” And much lower than the fee the city is enacting. What I am wondering is whether or not there is a document that lists the specific additional services driving the cost up to where it is. Do you have anything like that?
My major gripe with the “outreach” regarding the trash fee was that people were not shown the cost of each of the extras they were offered. They were asked their opinions of various bells and whistles but were never told what each bell or whistle would cost. It was very much like the OB Pier outreach. The public was asked for their preferences in all areas, again with no price tag. The result was a gold-gilded pier concept that will never be built.
We need to know what makes up the difference between somewhere like “”$18.96 to $19.59 per month.” and $43 per month. There is still time to delete some or all of the a la carte fee items because the system has not been initiated yet.