Cheaper trash and free Balboa parking could return
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Replacing these bad boys is expensive. Photo: Claire Trageser/Axios
You could be paying less for trash and nothing for Balboa Park parking next year.
The big picture: The City Council is considering a new deal Monday after outrage ensued over new fees that it passed last year.
- It made concessions to avoid a potential lawsuit and a ballot measure, which could have blown a massive hole in city finances.
The fine print: Here's what's in the revised deal coming before the council:
- The city will ax paid parking in Balboa Park in January.
- While trash fees were originally set to jump to $55 a month starting next July, the new deal will shave $16 off that bill for the largest bins.
- The fee for small bins will drop by $5 a month.
These concessions come at a cost.
- If passed, the city will lose $2 million next fiscal year and about $14 million annually over the following two fiscal years, according to city leaders.
- That's $10 million from the cheaper trash fees and $4 million from Balboa Park parking.
- The city can cushion the blow by abandoning some services, including bulky trash pickups, weekly recycling and all-electric garbage trucks, Councilmember Stephen Whitburn told the Union-Tribune.
Yes, but: Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement that a deal was necessary because the city could have lost $150 million in revenue if a ballot measure to nix the fees had passed.
- The city predicted it'd earn roughly that amount next year in trash fees but later revised the prediction to say it would earn $123 million because more people than expected opted for smaller, cheaper bins.
Catch up quick: The city approved trash fees in 2025 following a voter-approved ballot measure in 2022. But the fees listed in that ballot measure were lower than what the city eventually authorized, and a local group sued over what it alleged was false advertising by the city.
- The political group The Lincoln Club also proposed a ballot measure to eliminate the fees.
The new deal suggests the city is hedging its bets, SDSU politics professor Brian Adams told Axios.
- "So it was a safe option of saying, 'Let's take a hit; we'll lower the fees in exchange for making sure that we can still actually do the fees going forward,'" he said.
Friction point: The city's biggest mistake was adding "gold-plated" features, including computer chips in the trash cans to tell the city whether they'd been picked up, Adams said.
- Meanwhile, attempting to charge for parking in Balboa Park was a folly from the start because leaders should have known it would lead to revolt, he said.
- The city likely threw in ending parking fees to save face, Adams said.
"The city dug itself into a hole, and I think it dug itself out of the hole with this deal. And they got a little bit dirty in doing so, but we still dug ourselves out of the hole," Adams said.