Gloria, Elo-Rivera, La Cava Expected to be Subpoenaed
By Rag Staff
A Superior Court judge ruled Friday, October 10, that plaintiffs challenging the City of San Diego’s bait-and-switch trash fees can make their case in an expedited trial.
Under the decision handed down by Superior Court Judge James Mangione, the City can proceed with collecting the fees. But the three elected officials most responsible for the new fee collection – San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, and Council President Joe La Cava – are likely to be subpoenaed to explain under oath how they devised the program.
“We are going to have our day in court,” said plaintiff’s attorney Mike Aguirre.
“We’re ready to go to trial and ready to prove our case that the City is attempting to collect an unconstitutional fee by illegal means. And they are doing this to cover a hole in the budget because they didn’t get passage of the 1-cent sale tax increase ballot measure.”
Both parties to the lawsuit are scheduled to meet with Judge Mangione on October 24 to set a schedule for the expedited trial
Aguirre and co-counsel 
Maria Severson of Aguirre & Severson LLP have argued that the City is expected to collect $250 million more for trash collection in the next four years then they spent for trash collection over the past four years. “They’re going to divert that money to plug budget holes,” said Aguirre.
In June, the City Council voted 6-3 to impose the city’s first fee for trash collection at single-family homes. The monthly charge of $43.60 was much higher than the $23-to-$29 estimate voters were given before they approved Measure B in 2022 to let the city to start recovering trash pickup costs.
Appearing before the Council, Severson listed the many ways the trash fees violate California’s Proposition 218. She said the notice mailed to households was “defective [because] it did not clearly state that a failure to timely submit a protest is equal to a ‘Yes’ vote.”
Prop 218 also requires that “fees cannot exceed the City’s actual costs for providing services” – and those costs are yet to be determined,” Severson said. “If the City’s in a mess now, imagine if it starts collecting trash fees, and then it loses in court.”
At today’s hearing, no City elected official or member of the City Attorney’s Office were in court. The City chose to be represented by JarvisFay LLP, a costly Oakland firm that defends local governments in Prop 218 cases.
As it should be!
Someone needs to pull the mayor and council up short. Get ’em Mike!!!
Will San Diego taxpayers be paying the legal feesthe the mayor’s & the 2 council members
who defend their trash tax fees? Or will they personally pay for their fees?
I believe we pay for Mike Aguirre constantly suing the City and us seeing limited benefit from it.
But maybe it makes us feel a little less hopeless?
On a related item.-
Per SDUT Editorial, in a Friday interview, the president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said that under Proposition 218 — approved by state voters in 1996 — that’s not the case. Jon Coupal, who wrote the measure, noted that it specified that “the initiative power shall not be prohibited or otherwise limited in matters of reducing or repealing any local tax, assessment, fee or charge.”This power was protected by the specific requirement that only 5% of the total number of votes in a local government in the last gubernatorial election are needed to force a referendum on a local tax or fee. In the 2022 governor’s race, 421,007 San Diegans cast ballots. So it would take 21,051 verified signatures of city residents to put the new trash and parking fees on the 2026 ballot. How long would it take 50 volunteers to pull that off — two months? This would require the city to run a new, honest version of its campaign to persuade voters to raise trash collection fees. The 2022 push for Measure B, which enabled this year’s approval of new city trash policies, was built on deceit about how much the fees would be. What say u San Diegans?
Former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey is asking for support to get rid of the Trash Fees and the new proposed parking fees for beaches and Mission Bay.
https://x.com/RichardPBailey_/status/1990086286812827996
https://repealthefees.com
I would like to know if the method of voting for, or against this possible illegal fee being assessedby the city if San Diego. By sending a notification, which appeared to some like a news letter, was apparantly discarded without being read by many. That action cast an automatic YES vote. Is was incumbent on the home owner to cut out the NO vote from this informal looking notice, place it in an envelope, and mail it to the city. What would the results have been if by reversing the yes,and no ballots so that not sending in a vote would have resulted in a NO vote. The dishonesty is glaring.
Exactly
They’re trying to chase all senior citizens on limited incomes, out of the state. How can we sign up for this lawsuit?
Judge james mangione retired as of January 1 2026. Who will be handling the case from here?