More than a week into a trial challenging San Diego’s newly established trash fee on single-family homeowners, the City Council approved a settlement Wednesday that would end the legal dispute over the trash fee — and also have untold impacts on the city’s controversial new paid parking in Balboa Park.
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The agreement was approved in a closed-session council vote at the same time lawyers for the city were presenting their defense of the trash fee in San Diego Superior Court.
It was announced by Councilmember Stephen Whitburn and is set to be discussed publicly at a joint news conference Wednesday afternoon.
The trial was recessed Wednesday and is likely to be dismissed as soon as Thursday.
Last week, the City Council rejected a prior settlement deal that called for lowering the monthly fee for two years to $29, which was the high end of the range that voters were told to expect when they agreed to overturn the century-old People’s Ordinance in 2022.
Under the 1919 city law, San Diego was prohibited from charging homeowners any fee for trash service.
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After the measure passed, the city spent several years and millions of dollars on a cost-of-service study before announcing last year that the monthly fee would be $53.
But even before the City Council rejected that number and set the cost at just under $44 last June, about 20 residents challenged the fee in San Diego Superior Court. The trial started last Tuesday, one day after council members voted against a previous settlement proposal.
San Diego officials last fall added some $117 million to the county tax rolls for nearly 225,000 properties across the city, much of which has already been collected.
There was no immediate cost estimate for the settlement, but it is expected to make an already difficult budget year more problematic. Just last week, Mayor Todd Gloria warned that any reversal on the trash fee could “blow an estimated $150 million hole” in the new budget.
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This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
