Here are this week’s Repeal the Paid Parking at Balboa Park and Trash Tax petition table events:
Carmel Mountain Ranch:
Saturday, May 9th from 9a – noon (this one location has an earlier start time)
Ralphs — Carmel Mountain Ranch
11875 Carmel Mountain Road
San Diego, CA 92128
Mission Hills:
Saturday, May 9th from 10a – noon
Mission Hills Fabric Care Center
1604 West Lewis Street
San Diego, CA 92103
Pacific Beach:
Saturday, May 9th from 10a – noon
Vons – Pacific Beach (west door)
1702 Garnet Avenue
San Diego, CA 92109
Locations Where Petition Is Available During Regular Business Hours
The Repeal the Fees organization that is spearheading this effort has confirmed the locations below where people can sign the petition during regular business hours. Repeal the Fees will continue to add more locations. Stay tuned.
The Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park is also accepting petition drop-offs, as well as facilitating volunteer shifts within the park.
Locations to sign Repeal the Fees at Balboa Park during ‘regular business hours of the individual business/museum’ are listed below:
Air and Space Museum
2001 Pan American Plaza, San Diego, CA 92101
ARTIFACT at Mingei
1439 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101
The Prado
1549 El Prado, Suite 12, San Diego, CA 92101
Rudford’s Restaurant San Diego
2900 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, California, 92104
Mission Beach Rentals
3136 Mission Blvd, San Diego 92109
San Diego Bike Rentals
4090 Mission Blvd, San Diego, CA, 92109
Thanks, Frank, for publishing. 82,000 signatures needed or bust!!
Mike Aguirre previously stated he is in talks with Lincoln Club’s Kevin Faulconer to stop his trash repeal signature gathering campaign as part of settlement negotiations.
Hopefully the settlement can also includes an agreement between the Lincoln Club and the City.
Instead of just losing half the projected Trash Fee Revenue, the City may lose 100% of the new Fees if the Ballot measure is approved in November 2026. Risky move.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/05/08/settlement-of-disputed-san-diego-trash-fee-on-the-table-awaiting-a-decision-by-council-city-lawyers-tell-judge/
By JEFF MCDONALD | jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com | The San Diego Union-Tribune
PUBLISHED: May 8, 2026 at 3:45 PM PDT | UPDATED: May 9, 2026 at 7:48 AM PDT
“Settlement of disputed San Diego trash fee ‘on the table,’ awaiting a decision by council, city lawyers tell judge.
Days before the trial in a lawsuit challenging San Diego’s new trash fee for single-family homeowners is set to begin, a lawyer defending the city told a judge on Friday that a settlement had been reached and would be considered by the City Council on Monday.
If the agreement, whose terms were not disclosed in any detail, is approved by council members in closed session on Monday, the opening statements scheduled to be presented on Tuesday afternoon will be canceled.
“There is a proposal that is currently on the table in this case that is going to be taken to the City Council on Monday morning,” attorney Gabriel McWhirter told Judge Euketa Oliver during the pretrial hearing Friday.
McWhirter made the statement moments after both sides in the legal dispute confirmed they were prepared for trial and the judge ordered them to return to court Tuesday to present their opening statements.
Judge Oliver responded by asking if the trial should be pushed back to allow city officials more time to consider the proposed settlement, but each side declined.
“It is helpful to us to keep a precise deadline,” responded the plaintiffs’ lawyer, former elected San Diego city attorney Michael Aguirre. “I think we will probably know by 1:30 (p.m. Tuesday) what the outcome is.”
Assistant City Attorney Travis Phelps then said, “We would agree to keep the Tuesday date … We will know one way or the other.”
Neither the City Attorney’s Office nor lawyers representing the plaintiffs would comment Friday on the proposed settlement.
The disclosure of a possible deal also came the day after the San Diego City Clerk posted an amended agenda for the Monday council meeting. An update to the litigation was added to the closed-session calendar late Thursday, with lawyers seeking direction from elected officials.
It also came one week after lawyers for the city filed a series of motions aimed at shielding Mayor Todd Gloria, Council President Joe La Cava and Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera from testifying under oath during the trial.
The judge has not yet ruled on those briefs, telling the litigants on Friday that she planned to reread the filings on Tuesday morning before issuing a decision ahead of any trial.
“They don’t seem to be overly complicated,” she said of the legal arguments. “I don’t think they are going to take a significant amount of time.”
Aguirre and law partner Maria Severson represent about two dozen homeowners who claimed in a lawsuit filed last year that San Diego officials violated state law in the way they implemented a 2022 ballot measure permitting the trash fee.
With Measure B, voters narrowly decided to overturn a century-old law that guaranteed free trash service to San Diego single-family homeowners.
In the run-up to the November 2022 election, voters had been told the trash assessment would be between $23 and $29 per month.
But after spending some $7 million on a cost-of-service study and community outreach, the city adopted a fee of nearly $44 a month, scheduled to climb to $55 next year.
The plaintiffs challenging the fee argue city officials illegally calculated the fees charged in several ways.
They say the city wrongly estimated the number of taxpayers who would be subjected to the levy. They also accuse city officials of commingling revenue from the trash fee with other spending, making it difficult to ensure the fee is directly related to the cost of the service, as required under state law.
“The record shows that San Diegan voters approved a fee in the ballpark of $23-$29 per month and that no additional charge would be levied for additional services,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said. “The city violated that mandate.”
Budget records also show the city transferred tens of millions of dollars in spending and hundreds of staff positions into the solid waste fund after Measure B passed.
The city’s cost-of-service study said collecting the three different categories of waste — solid, recyclable and organic — would cost up to $148 million this year, up from $83 million last year. The same report pegged 2028 costs at $180 million, more than twice what was spent in 2025.
Plaintiffs said those costs are too high.
“In essence, the city has represented to San Diegan homeowners that the cost of collecting and disposing of trash has already increased by 78.41% in one year and will somehow double in three years,” they wrote in court papers.
The $523 annual levy that was added to single-family homeowners’ tax bills this year generated $117 million from some 223,000 property owners. The city said in pretrial briefs that the revenue is not enough to cover the full cost of residential trash service.
With members of the City Council scheduled to consider the proposed settlement early Monday, a public announcement could be forthcoming as soon as Monday afternoon.
The specific terms of the deal being considered remain unclear.
Meanwhile, separate from the lawsuit, a local business league is pursuing a ballot measure that could halt the implementation of the trash fee for two years.
The Lincoln Club of San Diego is collecting signatures in an effort to get that measure on the November ballot. The group, now run by former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, did not respond Friday to questions about the status of its signature drive.
A trial in a lawsuit over the fee is set to start Tuesday, but opening arguments will be canceled if council members approve the agreement Monday. The deal’s terms were not disclosed.”