By Kate Callen / February 4, 2026 
A constant reminder of our city’s slow collapse sits in the side yard of my house. It is a beat-up black trash bin, and it isn’t going anywhere.
Weeks ago, without notice, crews swept through my neighborhood to haul away the old black bins. Residents like me who didn’t have them at the curb missed the boat.
Trash collectors told me the bin would be picked up the following week. That didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen the week after that.
When you drive around your community, you might see these stray bins lurking about. Some people leave them at the curb like a defiant middle finger. I belong to the group that hides them. I don’t want my neighbors thinking, “Does she really believe the city will pick that up?”
The funny thing is that my bin had been sidelined for more than a year. Remember how the original bins cracked over time? And people would press duct tape over the cracks?
When the tape wore out, crews would stick warning labels like the one that appeared on my bin: We can no longer collect trash from this receptacle. Contact the city for a replacement.
I decided not to wait, so I went to Lowe’s to buy a bin. And that’s when I realized that the old trash bins ruptured because they were made of rigid plastic that splintered with repeated use.
Yup. City Hall paid God knows how much money to God knows which supplier for trash bins that would only last a few years. My 48-gallon Toter bin is made from resilient plastic resin. It has a 10-year guarantee. It cost $85.
I should probably submit a public records act request to find out more about the purchase of low-grade trash bins. Was there due diligence? Was it a no-bid contract? But I don’t need more evidence that our city is badly managed.
And I’m glad the new trash bins are made of sturdy material. It’s the least the city can do, given that new trash fees have jacked up my property taxes by 25 percent. For that kind of money, the bins should be coated with an opalescent honeycomb pattern.
On December 11, I submitted a Get It Done request to have my old bin picked up. I was told the wait time would be 2 to 4 weeks.
Nearly 8 weeks later, I’ve decided to accept reality and repurpose the bin. It now holds leftover lumber from my custom-built catio, the replacement for my original catio after one of my indoor cats found a way to escape through the roof.
I want to end by thanking the city’s trash crews. You serve the public far better than the suits who swan around City Hall. They work for the pols and the privileged. You work for us. Please know we appreciate you.
You’d stand a better chance on a large item pick up day event it seems. But convenient for storing firewood.
She stand a better chance if the trash can had been purchased from the city not Lowe’s
That’s very interesting, and unfortunate for you. It seems that they do different things for different neighborhoods (or different people).
In my case, here in San Carlos, I followed all their instructions last year for ordering the new bins on their webiste. Subsequently, in December they sent me an email telling me that “Your New Gray Trash Container(s) Will Be Delivered Tomorrow…” and instructed me to “…leave all trash and organic waste containers at the curb…Leave them out until crews complete delivery of your new gray container(s) and removal of your old black ones.” They added that the blue recycle container will be replaced later, with a light blue one. And the green organics containers, if we already have one, won’t be replaced.
That delivery day was my normal garbage pickup day, and the garbage pickup happened as usual, but the black one didn’t get taken away or replaced. So I (and most of my neighbors) left our black bins on the street overnight. Fortunately, the following day a crew came around and replaced the black trash bin with the grey one. So, an overnight delay wasn’t too bad.
I’d sure like to hear the city explain why they don’t consistently treat all neighborhoods (or people) the same way.
Because contractors do the pick-up of old bins. They know nothing beyond how to tear the wheels and lids off of the old bins.
We got what we paid for – cheap bins because we paid nothing for trash collection. Read this article if you actually care to understand the reason: https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2019/10/14/why-broken-trash-bins-san-diego
And if ~$600 is a 25% property tax increase, it means you were only paying $2400 a year in property taxes. That’s way too little to be in a position to complain or demand gilded trashcans. You are benefitting actively from Prop 13 that has done so much harm to CA city budgets!
Mel, free trash collection has kept our beaches and bays as clean as they have been until this shortside idiocy. Canyons have been kept clean for several decades because of a law passed by San Diegans with far more foresight and intelligence than you.
Prop 13 doesn’t hurt budgets nearly as much as incompetence, mismanagement, and political expediency.
What does the most harm to CA city budgets are high density tax subsidies that are nothing more than corporate welfare. Subsidies include additional money for infrastructure, water, sewer, police, fire departments, city services, gas and electric.
The City deliberately sandbagged allocating more than $1 Billion in Developer Improvement Funds so the corrupted politicians could give it back to their corporate masters.
Free trash has disincentivized avoiding trash.
I would love to see us pay for each and every trash can emptying so that we stop creating trash. Sure, some will pollute, but data from cities doing this show that it reduces trash: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/01/pay-as-you-throw-waste-expert-pollution-trash/
Great idea! If I were charged only for “every trash can emptying” I would pay for 1 black can once (maybe less) a month and 1 blue can twice a year. That’s the trash-generating life for old homeowners.
This is an excellent idea. For those of us who only need trash pickup once or twice a month it seems unfair to have to pay the weekly rate. I actually asked them to consider making that a choice when I was ordering my new bins and they responded “that is not an option” which was non-responsive to my request that they consider the idea. Still, our city council could make it happen if they were so inclined.
That’s what cracks me up the most about the trash fee outrage. It’s the people paying basically nothing in property taxes who have seen outrageous gains in their net worth complaining while young people fortunate enough to buy their first home are being absolutely squeezed for every drop.
Gains in net worth are unrealized gains while you lambast 10k in property taxes on a 1M property. A worthless argument you assume on all homeowners.
And one more thing, Mel and Greg, you have no idea what kinds of sacrifices were made to meet that monthly mortgage payment over many decades: vacations not taken, new clothes not bought, no eating out, and on and on. Not to even mention interest rates of 16% to 13% and much lower salaries than are earned today. Just be grateful for what you have and stop resenting others for what they worked hard to pay. And yes, Chris, current real estate values represent unrealized gains, gains that may never be realized by a person who is aging and worked hard to pay for their home.
Dear Mel and Greg: Give it a rest! Your resentful attitude to people who have paid property taxes for 30+ years is nauseating. …people who now have no work income and may be are NOT high in net worth due to all kinds of issues, such as health concerns and medical costs. You are just so tiresome.
Mel, about the gilded trashcans: To quote the great Foghorn Leghorn, “That was a joke, son!”
Your joke wasn’t funny and highlighting how little you pay in property was simply unnecessary.
Did you honestly consider what message it would send? Or did you just not read the room?
I don’t think it’s up to you, Mel, to decide if I can complain or not. Are you angry that you pay more in taxes because you paid more for your property than I did? I assume you knew what your taxes would be when you bought the property, so stop complaining. As to what does so much harm to the budget, look at where money went. Like 101 Ash St. That put us in debt for the next 30 years. And that just scratches the surface, there’s plenty of waste in San Diego’s government. But 50 bucks a month is expensive trash removal. You would think that for that kind of money, they could provide better service.
Yes, $50 a month is a lot of money to some of us. Lucky Mel and Greg, who think that’s a big nothing. I bet they spend more than that per week on coffee shop purchases (I’ve NEVER paid the price of a coffee in a shop: I search for the cheapest coffee I can find and drink my home-brewed cup at home).
Definitely. I could make the same hollow argument renters don’t pay property taxes either, while owners get on and off the tax merry go round at different times in life. Homeowners didn’t get a choice in the matter when fees were doubled before even starting the trash tax.
At least some of you got a gray trash bin. I’ve not heard when mine will come. It’s similar to the street lights in my neighborhood. Some didn’t work so the city shut them all down. Indefinitely. And they are in the middle of each corner section, not on sidewalk subject to crashes from cars that have no light to gage the road. And poor pedestrians. Better use a flashlight.
I welcome these little stories because they shed light on the degree of how recklessly incompetent the Mayor and Council are.
If $50 bucks a month is nothing or close to nothing as to the resentful seem to think, why dont they pick up my tab? simple enough.
And one more thing… I can use this platform while it’s here.
The city not only botched the roll-out of the trash cans, they went and charged EVERYONE the top price, for two years no matter their choice.
How can one praise the continued circus our city is putting on?
Here’s what I find amusing: If the city had just stuck with the $27/month fee they wouldn’t have the Aguirre lawsuit *or* the threat of a ballot measure to undo the fee, because honestly opponents wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. And that could have been done with minimal pain if they had skipped the RFID chips, the replacement of the (mostly) perfectly good blue recycling bins, the weekly recycling pickups almost nobody needs which was done to create jobs and get labor support, and maybe the lid tippers.
The Aguirre suit may or may not succeed and you couldn’t ask for a better team to be pushing it, but you can make book on the ballot measure both qualifying and passing, and the council winds up far, far worse than if they had left the fee at $27.