There Will Be Trash Talking About Repealing the People’s Ordinance in 2020
What's not to like about saving taxpayer dollars AND saving the planet?
Homelessness and housing policy are the two issues ‘everybody knows’ will be front and center in 2020 elections for the City of San Diego. There are already camps across partisan lines ready to weigh in on these matters.
There is, however, one sleeper policy challenge: our garbage. It’s a ‘third rail’ topic for local politicians, considered to be the kiss of death politically for anybody willing to speak up about changing a system that’s objectively unfair and a drain on the municipal budget.
If San Diego is to have any chance of meeting its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals, our waste removal and processing systems must change.
Fixing this problem needs to become a litmus test for anybody currently in or running for office.
What we’re talking about is repealing The People’s Ordinance, which allows single family residences to have their trash pickup subsidized by everybody else. Currently this law, which dates back to 1919, is on a crash course with SB 1383, a 2016 law requiring reductions in the level of the statewide disposal of organic waste.
A San Diego County Grand Jury called for elimination of the People’s Ordinance in 2009:
The City’s cost for general trash pickup and disposal is approximately $37 million per year. Additional related costs to the City include $6.9 million per year in recycling fees paid at the Miramar Landfill, and $8.8 million for curbside pickup of recyclables and green waste. Thus the total annual cost to the City for all trash and recycling services provided without charge to San Diego residents is $52.7 million per year. According to the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA), even this total likely understates the true cost because it does not account for legal, financial and other city-wide administrative support expenses.
The City doesn't have resources to deliver on past promises (let alone respond to SB 1383’s new targets and regulatory requirements). And we’re the only major California city that doesn’t charge residents a fee beyond ordinary taxes for trash collection.
SB 1383’s three primary targets for organic waste are:
50% organic waste reduction by 2020
75% organic waste reduction by 2025
20% increase in edible food recovery.
Reductions of short-lived climate pollutant emissions, including methane emissions, are one of five key climate change strategy pillars necessary to meet California’s target to reduce GHG emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 as established in SB 32.
The Fear of raising this topic among local politicians is prompted by visions of hordes of ‘get off my lawn’ homeowners storming the council chambers and subsequently voting out any official with the cajones to suggest a change is needed. And, dadgum it, nobody’s gonna take away their free stuff.
From a recent Voice of San Diego article on this topic:
Many other groups and advocates, including the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, have also advocated for policy changes over the years.
Yet 100-year-old law remains on the books – and seemingly remains a sacred cow.
Asked at a 2013 mayoral debate whether he’d consider changing the so-called People’s Ordinance, Mayor Kevin Faulconer had a straightforward response: No.
The lack of courage in tackling this topic by the council/mayor is especially galling, when one realizes all they have to do is put the question on the ballot. Since the ordinance was enacted by a popular vote, it can only be repealed at the ballot box.
Again, from the Grand Jury report:
If the Ordinance were repealed, the City would have the ability to provide economic incentives for waste reduction and increased recycling by charging trash pickup and disposal fees according to the amount of waste generated in each household. According to the Reason Foundation of Los Angeles, this variable-rate pricing, also known as “Pay As You Throw,” is being adopted in thousands of communities nationwide, including more than 200 in California, to create incentives for additional recycling and waste reduction in the residential sector.
Variable-rate programs encourage recycling, composting, and waste reduction, and are the single most effective method for reducing residential waste going to landfills, according to the Reason Foundation.
The Ordinance can be repealed by a simple majority of the voters. After repeal of the People’s Ordinance, enactment of an ordinance to charge for trash pickup and disposal could be accomplished after mailing notice to the affected property owners and not receiving written protests from a majority of those property owners. No election would be required under the provisions of Proposition 218. The IBA estimates that under the current system of unlimited trash pickup, the fee would be approximately $10.60 per month per household.
A newly organized Democratic club called We The People, along with Zero Waste San Diego, and the League of Women Voters, have an online campaign using a fill-in-the-blanks form (it takes 30 seconds, max, so do it now) to let your City Councilmember (it figures out who that person is for you) know there is popular support for repealing the People’s Ordinance.
I’m going to beat the drum on this one. Expect more columns of this topic.
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com
Lead image via Pixabay