The Los Angeles City Council moved on Friday to dramatically hike garbage fees to collect money and close the $1 billion budget deficit.
In a 10-1 vote, the council ordered city counsels to draft an ordinance that would increase the fees for around 740,000 clients, with councillors claiming the city has been subsidizing the costs of garbage picking for years.
Single-family homes and double-family owners will reach between $36.32 and $55.95 when they see more than double the garbage fees for next year’s budget year.
The fee for a small apartment building (with three or four units) will increase from $24.33 to $55.95, with each unit paying in full.
Garbage fees rise every year until 2029, reaching $65.93 in all categories.
For detached houses and double-chains, that represents an 81% increase this year. For a three- or four-unit building, each unit will cost almost triple.
In the bimonthly bill for residents from the Ministry of Water and Power, the increase will be displayed under the line item “Solid Resource Fees.”
The large apartments are not covered by planned trash rate hikes.
Residents can try to overturn the rates. Proposal 218, passed by California voters in 1996, requires property owners to mail information about the proposed fees and mail the hearing at least 45 days after mail.
If the majority of owners submit a written protest, the fee will fail.
Larglos, executive director of the Economic Survival Coalition, said in LA there is a high chance that landlords will either renew their lease or take over the rate hikes to tenants signing new leases. He expressed concern about the boring nature of fees that disproportionately hurt low-income residents as they pay the same amounts as wealthy residents.
Adlin Nazarian, a city council member representing East San Fernando Valley, voted for the only “no” at the city council meeting on Friday, expressing similar concerns.
He pointed to the dramatic hike seen in the first year by residents of the four-unit building. “The unit is going to pay as much as homes in the city’s richest neighborhood,” he said.
Councillors John Lee, Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla were absent from the vote on Friday.
City leaders say programs that help low-income residents pay fees will expand fees, claiming the last increase in garbage fees was 17 years ago.
City officials say that without a fee increase, the General Fund will lose about $200 million in the next budget year.
Price increases are planned as the city faces a budget shortage of around $1 billion and the potential elimination of thousands of cities’ jobs. Mayor Karen Bass is expected to announce the proposed budget and plans to close the financial gap later this month.
Part of the shortfall is due to labor costs and recent increases in wages for workers. This includes police officers and firefighters approved by Bass and the Council.
Howard Jarvis taxpayer assn. On Friday, it blasted garbage raises and criticised the Bass and City Council’s fraud management council of overexpenditure, causing “affluent” labor contracts and policies to “drove businesses out of the city, lowering business and sales tax revenues.”
“The mayor and city council may want taxpayers to bail out Los Angeles, but there’s a greater chance that taxpayers will bail out of Los Angeles,” the association said.
Several health department employees spoke in support of the rate at a city council meeting on Friday.
Charles Leone, coordinator of the United Nations 721 Service Employees, representing sanitary workers, told the council that the fees should have been “decades ago,” explaining his efforts to pick up trash.
“They took on the homeless crisis. They take out the trash every day, lift the mattress every day, address the couch every day, and the list goes on,” he said.
The council raised sewer rates for all property owners last year. City officials say that landlords (the majority of the city’s units) who own rent-stabilized units (the majority of the city’s units) cannot be handed over to tenants.
