It’s becoming clearer how the budget debate is going to play out at City Hall as leaders address a projected $258 million deficit in the fiscal year beginning July 1. It looks like the biggest decisions about painful service cuts won’t be made for months, despite the calls of some City Council for immediate action. But that won’t be Mayor Todd Gloria’s and the council’s only huge challenge. They will also need to win over many residents irate over a city plan to implement new trash collection fees on 233,000 households, which would reduce the deficit by $71 million, as allowed by age of Measure B in 2022.
On Tuesday, Gloria announced that Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan, the highest-paid city worker, had been let go and his position eliminated as part of a modest plan to shave $5.3 million off the deficit. He acknowledged that more dramatic cuts were coming in the spring and that when the city reached that point, he expected a “fairly emotional” reaction from stakeholders. But in a Thursday telephone interview with an editorial writer, Gloria took in stride the extremely emotional reaction from many San Diegans to the trash plan, which goes before the City Council on March 25.
It calls for the standard rate for newly billed homeowners to be $53 a month, with a follow-up 22 percent increase to $65 a month in 2027. But in 2022, voters were told that a city analysis forecast monthly bills of $23 to $29. Their reaction to the plan: More than 90 percent of letter writers to the U-T blasted it as showing Measure B was sold with lies; for proposing unwanted, costly “world-class” levels of service; and for ignoring how the proposal would hammer those on fixed incomes. Some also expressed incredulity that a city with a giant annual pension bill intended to add 130 new workers as part of its plan and asked why contractors who charged far less couldn’t be used instead.
But Gloria said the plan had been developed for years with vast public input; that options costing less than $53 would be available; and that relief would be available to those who struggled with bills. He pushed back at the idea that voters were deceived in any way, saying the 2022 analysis of costs was not an “apples to apples” comparison because it reflected providing a lower level of services than residents wanted based on “hundreds of community meetings” held in the two years since then.
But during these meetings, were residents even aware how much the monthly bill would balloon with additional services? Furthermore, any claim that it’s unfair to accuse city leaders of dishonest tactics is undercut by the official fiscal impact statement the city put out about Measure B. Yes, it raised the possibility that the fee could be higher than the $23 to $29 forecast. But in the same paragraph, it suggested it was a realistic possibility that that the fee would be less “if the city elects to subsidize some portion of the costs to provide solid waste services” — as if this was possible in a city with a pension monster to feed.
So here’s the key question: Do city leaders honestly believe that if San Diegans knew in 2022 what they know now, they’d have backed Measure B, which only received 50.5% of the vote? Of course not. That is the very definition of a “bait and switch.”
