There's an editorial in the new issue of one of our local alterna-weekly news magazines, CityBeat, focusing on one of the many unspoken oddities of the current San Diego fiscal crisis. The paper and others have questioned why, if the city is so strapped for cash that they're considering closing libraries and parks (and now seem poised to shut down the fire rings dotting some of the local beaches, a move that mystifies me), nobody in the mayor's office has suggested that the notoriously stingy residents of San Diego might have to pay a little bit for some of their free or cheap services. And an obvious choice would be reconsidering the city's policy on free trash pickup.
San Diego, so far as I know, is one of the few cities in California (and the country) to actually have a law prohibiting any charge for residential trash pickup, and certainly the only one of its size to do so. As sacred a cow to local politics as Proposition 13 is statewide, this free garbage pickup stipulation has been on the books for nearly one hundred years. The People's Ordinance of 1919 was instituted when San Diego was a young city of 70,000 people and garbage consisted mainly of leftover food. As theft of rotting food increased (often for livestock purposes), the city offered to pick up the garbage, free of charge. I've also heard, anecdotally, that area residents were used to tossing their trash into the many canyons across the area, and would have continued to do so had fees been introduced for pickup. The 1919 ordinance has become a general-fund expense for the city since the 1970s, when property tax laws changed. The city now holds nearly 1.3 million people, yet the trash offer still stands. Or, I should say, the trash offer still rules.
This is no small matter. An excellent San Diego Business Journal article from 2003 outlines how San Diego differs from other California cities in this regard.
City Household Monthly Rate for Trash Pickup
Santa Barbara $22.53
Sacramento 21.67
Oakland 18.66
Long Beach 18.00
Fresno 16.44
Anaheim 15.20
San Jose 14.95
San Francisco 14.83
Santa Ana 13.61
Bakersfield 12.00
Chula Vista 11.00
Irvine 10.78
Santa Clara 9.20
Los Angeles 6.00
San Diego 0.00
As the above numbers suggest, we're not discussing massive amounts of fees here. If Los Angeles can charge $6 in 2003 for trash pickup, surely San Diego could request $8 in 2008 to help close the $43 million deficit. A recent Union-Tribune article notes that the 1919 Ordinance costs the city $37.6 million per year. The Mayor's plan to close libraries and rec centers represented a savings of $6.2 million. I'm not the only one wondering aloud what on earth is wrong with this picture.
The mayor, as the CityBeat editorial notes, has refused to even comment on whether or not charging for trash pickup would be a good idea or feasible (it would require a public vote and 50% approval). While conventional wisdom holds that repealing the ordinance would be political suicide, a recent online balance-the-budget-yourself project sponsored by the U-T suggests that city residents aren't as opposed to paying for trash removal as the powers that be believe they are - nearly two-thirds of the first 96 respondents suggested instituting a fee for garbage. At the risk of sounding redundant, I'll repeat the numbers. A $43 million deficit. $37.6 million lost revenues from free trash pickup.
If the mayor's office is too frightened to recommend this action, it may be up to the people to start petitioning for(can't believe I'm writing this) a new tax or fee. However unlikely such an event is, it may be the only approach left when faced with a spineless administration offering no vision for the future and unwilling to take unpopular, yet logical, stands.
Finally, I'm heartened by the fact that local businesses have stepped in to offer support, both moral and financial, to those services targeted by the city for closure to save a (relatively) paltry $6 million. A fellow library friend alerted me to an upcoming fundraiser at the new Otay Ranch Barnes and Noble this Monday, Dec. 1, sponsored by the Chula Vista Public Library. Percentages of every book purchased will be donated to the library, which is in desperate need of funding. Closer to my home is the recent announcement that Ocean Beach's Falling Sky Pottery, 1951 Abbot Street, will be donating 5% of their sales between December 7 and December 21 to the Ocean Beach Library. This kind of community generosity is exactly what's needed during times of fiscal crisis. Goodwill does seem to be in the air. Good leadership is sorely lacking.
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5 weeks ago
1 comment:
The logical way to finance services and goods which serve to make a community a better place to live is through a tax on the land value. Share the burden in accordance with the annual value of the land. Some sites are more valuable than others, either because of their location, or their size, or their view, or their lack of negative amenities.
In a wise society, we collect all the revenue we need to provide publicly funded services from the annual (also known as rental) value of land.
California transformed itself into an unusually and uniquely unwise society in 1978. But that doesn't mean that wiser and cooler heads can't reverse the inanity and restore California to its potential glory as a fine place not just for the rich and older folks who own the choicest sites, but for all its residents.
What a novel idea!
Trash picekup should have user fees associated with it. A household which produces a single bag of trash a week should not pay the same amount as a McMansion which produces many many times that amount. (I'm generalizing, of course, but suspect the data would generally prove my generalization.)
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