Residents Decry 23 Percent Hike in Garbage Rates

An arduous discussion over garbage rates Monday night culminated in the San Mateo City Council agreeing to raise them by 23.3 percent for city residents.

The well-attended meeting featured cheers and jeers from the audience, many of whom were older residents there to denounce the rate hike proposal as “outrageous” and “unacceptable.”

But city staffers and council members countered that the rate hike was needed to pay off a $2.2 million shortfall, and they reassured residents that it wasn’t a “camel’s nose under the tent” from the city’s , Recology. The proposal passed 3-0, with two council members abstaining.

Ultimately, the size of the rate increase, which takes effect April 1, depends on the size of the black, garbage-only container each household uses. For the 32-gallon cart – the most popular size among San Mateo residents – the rates will increase by just over $3 a month. For the smallest cart, a 20-gallon size, rates will increase by $1.91 a month. The other two containers which Recology picks up every week – a blue one for paper, plastic and glass recycling and a green one for compost – do not incur fees for most residents.

“I’m really confused about what’s going on,” said Tom Wasser, one of several San Mateo residents who spoke publicly to denounce the rate hike. “It sounds like slight of hand.”

In an effort to explain the increase, city recycling program coordinator Roxanne Murray said a $3.5 million bill was owed to Allied Waste, whose contract ended on Dec. 31, 2010. Other factors, including “cart migration” – the tendency of residents to chose smaller, cheaper garbage containers since more of their refuse is going into recycling – have also resulted in lost revenue.

As a result, she said, this should be a “one-time change of increase. And I think beyond this point they should expect to see modest, if any, increases year-to-year.”

Some audience members mocked statements like this, and Mayor Jack Matthews repeatedly called for quiet in the . During the public comment period many speakers brought their own ideas for fixing the garbage revenue shortfall. Holding up a poster to help make his point, Eugene Dunn proposed staggering the recycling service to cut down on costs.

“One week, pick up the green (recycling); one week, pick up the paper,” he said. This will reduce the number of Recology employees, he said, and “It’s not only the Indians that are less, but maybe get rid of a few of the chiefs.” The remark drew loud applause in the chambers.

City staffers and some council members brought a number of arguments in favor of the increase. Council member David Lim noted that if people use their recycling to its full capacity, they can cut back on garbage and lower the size of their cart. Even after the increase, the 20-gallon cart costs less per month than the 32-gallon cart costs before the increase.

A family of four, using the recycling options to their fullest – throwing table scraps in the compost bin and all paper, plastic and glass into the blue bin – can easily reduce trash output on an average week to less than 20 gallons. Recology also allows bulky items to be tossed on special days, and some previously hard-to-recycle items – – can now be disposed of safely by placing them on top of the blue bin.

Larry Patterson, the city’s director of public works – who was present for the negotiations that resulted in San Mateo and several other Peninsula cities settling on Recology – addressed accusations that Recology was abusing the system and would now be continually raising rates on residents.

“I think it’s unfair to categorize the selection process as somehow deceptive, it was not,” he said.

“The camel’s nose is not under the tent, in fact we’ve defined, very strictly, how things will be going forward, but we have to get through this first year.”

By contrast, he said, under Allied Waste “our rate increases were going up about 12 percent a year every year.”

Patterson acknowledged that when it comes to execution, “we have some rough spots, one of them that was mentioned by a speaker was street sweepers. We recognize that (they have) gotten out of sync on some places” – resulting in sweepers coming the same day that the Recology bins are on the curb, so that the curbs can’t be cleaned.

“But our intent is getting them back in alignment,” Patterson said, either by adjusting Recology’s or the street sweepers’ routes. He asked for patience from residents while they worked out wrinkles in the new service, which serves about 120,000 customers in San Mateo alone.

Roxanne Murray, the recycling coordinator, also said that one major goal of the new recycling options was “to extend the life of the current landfill” at , the landfill in Half Moon Bay where San Mateo’s garbage goes. “Once that landfill is closed, where is (the garbage) going to go?” she asked.

To that end, she said, the new system under Recology is working: Already, waste is being diverted from the landfill by 15 percent compared to last year at this time.

Not everyone is taking full advantage of the increased recycling capacity yet, she said, but “It does make a difference for those who do, and it’s a substantial difference.”