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.
My property taxes have always had a fee for trash, even when I owned a townhome.
I ordered a 35 gallon trash bin, a 65 gallon recycle bin, and a 65 gallon food waste bin.
The city charged me for the highest priced bins across the board on my Dec tax payment. Also for the April payment.
Can you honestly say the city is managing their budget well?
Some townhomes received free trash pickup until last year and now have to pay for private if they have more than 4 units. Many have been paying private for long time. Townhomes with trash dumpster have for example always paid a private company for pickup and they paid the same property taxes.
Either way, there was never a fee for trash. There is a fee for the zoo, school and other items but trash was not listed.
City has also announced that you will get the money back for the smaller bin.
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.
Conflating property taxes into the trash scam convo is your sour grapes for choosing and buying a condo when you did (as everyone does in their life journey) and likely didn’t think much about paying for trash to begin with. Either of those two items haven’t changed for you, before or after the trash scam. Your protest about unfairness rings hollow. Are you paying the new SFR city rate for trash now? Doubt it. Many people would give in to a fair rate equivalent to what the going rate is. Even Mike Aguirre said as much with the lawsuit. Cut a deal now or end up with zero later. And squawking about what a 3rd gen resident pays in property taxes. Everybody navigates the same river, some started navigating before others. That’s life.
My private trash service costs more than the city charges.
My question to you was, if the trash fee is repealed, do you support including condos/townhomes in the free trash service?
A silly response. No private hauler is paying more. Your HOA is failing you and you don’t know it. So why would I agree to repealing a fee to a private hauler? That’s a separate contract outside of the trash tax issue itself. You just DQ’d yourself.
Pick up for green, blue and green cans costs more with a private company than with the city. I have seen the bill.
But again, why should a condo have to pay for the same bins to be picked up that a single family home wants for free?
Not one person in the comment section dares to say that they want single family homes to have free pickup but not townhome. Do you dare?
Trash collection has never been free Mel. Your issue should be taken up with your HOA. This BS argument that you keep whining about is most likely a matter of logistics. How many “town-homes” are there in your complex 10-20 maybe 30-40?
How does a trash truck empty 30-40 individual trash cans from your one single complex cost effectively, when the same trash truck can empty 30-40 single trash cans that covers an area of more than 3-4 city blocks worth of houses? This is typically why apartment complexes, condo and town-home complexes have trash and recycling dumpsters. Once again this is an HOA issue.
Your hypocritical issue with the difference between a town-home owner and homeowners shouldn’t reap havoc on the environment exponentially increasing illegal dumping in our canyons, polluting our watersheds, littering our beaches and polluting our bays and ocean all-the-while supporting the fiscal irresponsibility that brought us to these proposed fees in the first place.
Furthermore the RIFD trashcan replacement golden goose robbed $65-$85 million from our mismanaged city budget.
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.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch, the last bit was a joke – exemplified with the obvious acronym “LOL” in case your emotions were too high to catch that.
You said it yourself, the “garbage fees” were embedded into property taxes – so are you paying for the trash really? Or are you paying to keep your home? Is it a cash grab from the city? Yeah, most likely. But lets be real transparent here – just like this blog post suggests… people will complain if they have to pay for necessary goods and services, even if its a net benefit for society. And as others have pointed out, theres a clear discrepancy in who’s been paying what depending if you own a SFD, condo or live in a HOA. Sounds like the people that have single family homes are upset that they now have to shell out the cash everyone else has already been paying. Managing human waste ain’t cheap, and if we want to keep our oceans and canyons clean we need to make concessions to actually make that happen.
I dont disagree that a major reform and transparency of trash fees needs to be implemented – but I can promise you that people would still push back even if that were the case. American is the land of the FREE after all… LOL (thats a joke by the way in case you didnt catch that).
Javier your points fail to address any of the above outlined legitimate environmental concerns.
You blow past the fact that the city that you have lived in, for however long you have lived here, has remained as clean as it has been able to, because of generations of San Diegans, obviously much, much wiser than you that realized the critical importance of trash collection in our role as good stewards to nature that surrounds us and the beauty that is/was paradise.
There is a massive discrepency between “complaining” and residents voicing legitimate concerns for illegal dumping (which once again, you completely blow off as somehow unimportant, nominal and irrelevant.)
If you want to pose the argument that there are inequities in the system between homeowners and condo owners then address those issues. You don’t even make any fricking point here.
“Human waste” is excriment and urine. Trash is trash.
Your comments are as irrelevant as they are incoherent, and not to mention baseless.
To answer your question do we pay for trash collection? YES, WE DO PAY FOR TRASH COLLECTION ALREADY, AND HAVE FOR DECADES!
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?
The housing affordability gurus didn’t have to change out trash cans. They could have kept the prices lower and faced less pushback. If the inflated rate stands, it opens the door for private haulers to raise prices. Those 200K MM’s have pensions too.
Thank you for the supportive comments folks.
I do wish I could add a snapshot of my property tax where it lists every line item fee/tax.
It’s yet another example of governmental bait & switch. I did not need new trash cans but every expense from providing them, plus every added employee to recycle or distribute them, was rolled into their newly approved blank check. $523/yr is the beginning. I’ve read it will be $700/yr in two years. I’m sure employee bonuses and large salary increases are next, as hey… we gave them a blank check. The 51% that voted for this haven’t figured out that anything that can be gamed, WILL be gamed. That or their zeal to punish those entitled homeowners exceeds their awareness.
Back in 2021 when Elo-Tax-Man-Rivera conjured up this fee, the involved financial calculations were a fraction of what has been created vis a vis the Cost of Service Study AFTER the election that imposed the fee. And the Tax Man INTENDED to stick-it to homeowners evidenced by his discriminatory attitude: “That’s 35 or $40 million [the cost for City waste collection service] every year that we are subsidizing for folks who are much better positioned to absorb that cost than those who don’t,” Elo-Rivera said. “It’s wild, and there’s neighborhoods where you can, you know, you walk down the street and you see a nice single-family home next to an apartment building. And you say, ‘Which one of those families gets free trash pickup?’ It’s not the one who needs it.” Such a biased, hateful twit. After all is said and done, San Diego’s new trash collection fee is projected to generate approximately $140 million annually once fully implemented. For the 2026 fiscal year specifically, the cost of waste collection services is projected to be $139.4 million. W T F ? And no, it won’t be $700/yr in two years it will be $568/yr for the 35/95/95 bundle. Did you all know that in 5 years, there will be another Notice sent to you that will inform you of the trash fee rate hikes for 2029-2033? Which you will have an opportunity to protest. And for all you condo/apt dwellers, how much do YOU pay per month for your trash pick-up? It’s on your Annual Budget report. How much? I can tell you that for the Pacific Isle condos, it’s $16.25/mo. per unit.
Seriously, did anyone read the Notice that was sent? The one that notified you of your opportunity to Protest the fee? Did you send your Protest form in to PREVENT the fee? You had a chance to do just that. Did you actually vote in favor of Measure B? Fraught with misleading statements and half-truths? You have only yourselves to blame for this fiasco. Wake up people. I hope Mike Aguirre’s lawsuit balances the scales, or better yet, repeals the fees altogether based on the Measure B fraud.
I read the notice and mailed it in. Finding the protest form buried deep within (pg 5, you had to cut it out and mail it, no envelope included) was yet another example of gaming the result. I read letters to the U-T from people complaining that they didn’t get a ballot, not knowing you had to dig for it. I got the circa $700 /yr from the below estimates at Inside San Diego. For 2029-58×12 = $696.
FY 2026 (Starting July 1, 2025): $32.82 (35-gal) – $43.60 (95-gal).
FY 2027 (Starting July 1, 2026): $33.66 (35-gal) – $44.57 (95-gal).
FY 2028 (Starting July 1, 2027): $40.57 (35-gal) – $55.00 (95-gal).
FY 2029 (Starting July 1, 2028): $42.89 (35-gal) – $57.55 (95-gal).
Inside San Diego
Inside San Diego