Citing what they call a litany of past failures by San Diego officials, five residents filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop a city trash pickup fee before it can be formally approved by the City Council next month.
The legal complaint accuses Mayor Todd Gloria and others of violating Proposition 218, a state ballot measure ed nearly 30 years ago that prohibits government agencies from charging more for services than the actual cost of delivering those services.
It’s the first legal challenge to the city’s effort to begin charging single-family homeowners for trash pickup since the age of Measure B, the 2022 ballot measure that allowed the city to charge for trash service.
San Diego voters narrowly approved the proposition, overturning a 1919 law that had given the city authority to collect residential waste but also called for the service to remain free to single-family homes in perpetuity.
Since then, the city has struggled to figure out an appropriate charge or even determine the number of new customers who would pay the added cost. The latest fee schedule — just under $48 initially — remains twice as high as the low end of the estimate provided to voters in 2022.
The lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court alleges that the proposed monthly charge to homeowners is much higher than the previous year’s cost of providing the service, and contends the disparity would violate the 1996 law requiring public agencies to only charge customers the cost of providing that service.
The complaint alleges that trash pickup cost the city nearly $89 million to provide last year, and that a city consultant concluded it would cost nearly $149 million in fiscal 2026, two thirds higher.
“Instead of enrolling the trash collection customers and then allowing the customers to select their level of solid waste collection service, the mayor and most of the City Council have arbitrarily decided to impose a tax instead of an actual cost-of-service,” the suit says.
City lawmakers, it alleges, “have engaged in an elaborate plan to set the cost-of-service charge based on guess estimates.”
“The tax is not based on the actual cost of trash collection costs incurred by the 222,500 San Diego city taxpayers,” it adds.
The five homeowners are asking a San Diego Superior Court judge to render the city’s previous approval of the trash fee null and void.
The plaintiffs are San Diego residents Mary Brown, Scott Case, Patty Ducey-Brooks, Lisa Mortensen and Valorie Seyfert. A court date for the complaint filed Monday has yet to be scheduled.
The Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit; the City Attorney’s Office declined to discuss it. “We are unable to comment on pending litigation,” Ibrahim Ahmed, a spokesperson for City Attorney Heather Ferbert, said by email.
A majority of the City Council advanced the fee last month, but a final vote is scheduled June 9.
The property owners who sued are represented by the former elected San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre and his law partner, former assistant city attorney Maria Severson. They’re seeking declaratory relief, a judicial order that stops an action opposed by a party in a lawsuit.
The 14-page complaint includes 19 additional pages of exhibits the plaintiffs say show how city officials and their consultant misled voters and underestimated how much monthly trash service would cost.
“The city was unable to implement a cost-of-service program because it was unable to identify the names and addresses of the customers upon whom the trash collection fee is to be imposed,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Instead, the city has decided and is attempting to implement the cost of service by coupling it on San Diego city taxpayers’ property tax bill issued twice a year,” it adds. “After what appears to be a bait-and-switch, the city of San Diego officials now propose to charge over $45 per month to be billed in two annual payments.”
The city’s independent budget analyst estimated ahead of the 2022 election that the expected trash fee for single-family homeowners would be between $23 and $29 per month, a figure that appeared in voter guides.
After the ballot measure ed, the city hired an outside consultant for nearly $5 million to evaluate potential cost structures. In February, a proposed monthly fee was introduced at $53. Property owners complained bitterly, and last month, the city lowered it by about $5.
Last month, the City Council approved the nearly $48 monthly fee on a 6-3 vote, while telling budget analysts to prepare cheaper options. It’s scheduled to consider the final amount at a hearing on June 9, although the outcome is uncertain.
Councilmember Raul Campillo, for example, said he would not a fee higher than what voters were told to expect.
“Voters absolutely depend on that information to be accurate and reliable,” he said in voting against a $47.59 fee. “When the city s a dollar value, the city should not charge more, and I will not vote to charge more.”
The estimated $47.59 monthly fee to homeowners is more than most Southern California cities charge for trash service, the Union-Tribune has previously found.
Riverside charges $37.32 per month, and Pasadena stands at $46.61. Los Angeles is at $41.32 but recently approved a five-year plan to incrementally raise its fees above $55, and Long Beach charges $42.66 now but has OK’d increases that will drive the cost to $68.73 next year.
Cities that rely on private companies for residential trash service pay notably less. The median fee among 12 local cities surveyed by San Diego was $32.
But city officials said such comparisons can be misleading. It costs more in San Diego because the city is so sprawling; a service provider has to serve communities from the U.S.-Mexico border all the way north to Rancho Bernardo.
And this month, city budget experts explained how their original estimate ended up so far off the city consultant’s recent proposal. Their main mistakes, they said, were projecting costs too low and exaggerating the number of trash customers.
They said that while they had previously estimated the city was spending $79.1 million to provide no-fee trash service to single-family homes, it was now clear that $104.8 million was a better estimate.
Budget experts also assumed the costs would be spread across 285,000 customers — the number of single-family homes in the city. But only about 223,000 homes are actually eligible, sharply raising the cost per home.
