Letter to City of San Diego & Mayor Todd Gloria
By Shannon Greenlee
My April property tax bill increased by over $500 due to the added trash fee — and that’s only one of two annual payments.
If I refuse to pay the portion related to the trash fee increase (more than $1,000 total), I face penalties and even the risk of losing my home.
This is unacceptable.
City of San Diego and Mayor Todd Gloria — I’m on a fixed income. Between this and the new parking fees at Balboa Park, you are asking long-time residents like me, a senior and third-generation San Diegan, to bear the cost of your poor financial decisions.
Additionally, my property taxes include funding for neighborhood lighting, which I understand is meant for maintaining streetlights. Yet the historic lamps in Loma Portal have been shut off for over a year, leaving our neighborhood dark and unsafe. If these funds are being collected, where are they going?
The cost of the trash fees is clearly shown on this website and is not $1000/year:
https://www.sandiego.gov/environmental-services/trash-service-updates/fee-calculator
You either have more than 3 cans, or you are not taking into account the annual increase in property taxes.
Either way, you have received >60 years worth of free trash pickup during which time condo owners, often paying higher property taxes, paid for their trash. How was that fair?
I agree that the cost of the new tax for trash pickup is spelled out although they have “borrowed” from many of us who chose smaller containers–they increased our tax burden the amount of the largest containers. I’ll be interested to see if they actually refund the difference next year and whether they pay interest on it.
As far as “free trash pickup” I just can’t agree. We paid our property taxes and that was the money the city used for any number of services. Suddenly taking that service away and then charging us a “fee” does not change the nature of what it is–another tax. If it was really a fee they should have charged it as a fee like Waste & Water and they should have reduced our property tax that amount. This is just a money grab as far as I’m concerned.
As a condo owner I pay the exact same proportional property taxes and did not get free trash pick-up. My property taxes helped pay YOUR trash pick up and my HOA fees paid my trash pickup. Make that make sense.
By all means repeal the trash fee, but then make it free for all residential buildings. Not just those who can afford a single family home.
Either way, you have received >60 years worth of free trash pickup during which time condo owners, often paying higher property taxes, paid for their trash. How was that fair?
What if they just bought their home within the past few years and didn’t get 60 years?
Secondly, condo owners paying higher taxes is a red herring. Considering when you bought and for how much doesn’t mean condo owners were in an unfair situation.
You could have said, ($523.20 annually) for 95-gallon bins. While often added to property tax bills as an annual charge, and not been so toxic.
The discrepancy between condo owners and single family homes needed to be fixed. It was completely unfair and not a single person has provided a good argument why condo owners did not deserve free trash service as well.
I would argue that if we repeal the trash fees, it should now apply to every residential building, not just single family homes. How many would vote for that when they understand the financial implications it would have for the city? Would you?
And sure, purchase price matters, but I am sure you will agree that many 3rd generation SD resident pay a lower property tax than the average condo owner.
Are long-term residents and senior citizens of San Diego so unaware on what most other residents are facing in terms of taxes and housing costs? How many other senior citizens are stuck in houses they can no longer afford but can’t sell because there is no place for them to go? The naivety is astounding.
Yikes! That’s a good looking trashcan, but was it worth it…? Hmmm….
America is one the most wasteful countries in the world, and yet we still want rid ourselves of the responsibilities it comes with being a mass consumer society. Paying for trash services is an extremely basic and sensible policy that should come with being a homeowner – I mean, if you really want to save some money you might as well just throw it in the ocean so it can reach the great pacific garbage patch… LOL
Javier, get bent! Once again your commentary is dishonestly to stating that trash services “are not being paid for” and implying that trash collection is “free”, when garbage fees have been embedded in property taxes for the last 60 years.
The current trash fee scheme is 100% the result of gross mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility. This fleecing of the People is, above all, environmentally reprehensible as those seeking to evade the “fees” that will result in trashing America’s Finest City because we will all see an exponential explosion of illegal dumping in our canyons. Undoubtedly, this will result in catastrophically polluting our watersheds, litter accumulating in our bays, on our beaches and in an exponential increase in microplastics in our oceans and ecosystems.
If you indeed were so concerned about the Pacific Garbage Patch you would be crusading against this idiocy. And that makes you a hypocrite.
Here’s the kicker Javier, I Love A Clean San Diego and plain old responsible everyday San Diegans that care enough about the abundatnt wildlife throughout this city and make the daily effort to clean up the already massive amounts of litter now, are going to be charged for removing that trash and litter from nature to put it in our taxpayer funded landfill.
Well, somebody had to pay for the hiring of all the City’s new middle managers making $200k/yr. Good thing they’re throwing in new bins that take the place of my perfectly good existing ones.
San Diegans: Please help us with affordability!
The City: Best we can do is more trash fees and more parking fees. That do anything for ya?