San Diego met a key deadline in its chaotic revamp of its trash service last week when the share of former city customers searching for new private service fell below 20% for the first time. Meeting that goal by the city’s self-imposed Dec. 15 deadline prompted officials to delay plans to start se nding warning letters about potential fines to the remaining 3,700 properties that still must make that transition. Some new problems have emerged with landlords at small complexes not ordering enough new gray cans to adequately service their residents. But officials said those instances have been rare and isolated. City officials have also revised downward — from $3 million to somewhere between $2 million and $2.5 million — how much they expect to spend servicing former city customers who have been slow to transition. Nearly 20,000 city customers were declared ineligible for city trash service when the city shifted to charging customers for it. Only single-family homes and complexes with fewer than five units are eligible. Jeremy Bauer, assistant director of the city’s Environmental Services Department, said Thursday that the recent acceleration in transitions has helped reduce how much the city will end up spending. Officials are also finalizing details of a subsidy program for low-income residents that will see some bills get immediately reduced, with the county assessor sending out revised property tax bills. Meanwhile, city crews continue to deliver new gray cans and pick up the old black cans they are replacing. Through Tuesday, 87,533 new gray cans had been delivered to 75,656 addresses — just over a third of the city’s 225,000 trash customers after the transition. Pickups of old black containers to be recycled have accelerated since the city began allowing residents to request a pickup on the city’s Get It Done! tipster app. Nearly 81,500 black containers have been picked up. More than 52% of eligible properties — 115,809 — have created trash accounts at the city’s website. Those without accounts can’t adjust their service level and don’t get alerts about special events. Bauer said city officials were pleased to achieve the 80% goal on switching newly ineligible properties over to private service. Through Wednesday, new service from private haulers had been secured by 15,266 of 18,933 of those properties — 80.38%. One factor helping the city achieve that goal: A growing number of customers have won appeals of earlier city decisions that they were no longer eligible for city service. The number of newly-ineligible customers has shrunk from more than 20,000 to just under 19,000 since last summer. The city aims to get to 90% by the end of February. “We now have our sights set on the 90% goal,” Bauer said. The black trash bins used by the City of San Diego being removed in Rancho Bernardo’s Westwood neighborhood on Oct. 28. (Elizabeth Marie Himchak) The warning letters, which Bauer suggested could be mailed in early January, could help accelerate the process. Property owners could begin to face fines as high as $200 for not securing private service. Bauer said the warning letters have been delayed by the need for Environmental Services officials to work out the details of citations with the city Treasurer’s Office. The progress comes after months of chaos as property owners and homeowners associations were either being offered rates far higher than they had expected or getting rejected outright by private haulers that said they lacked enough trucks and workers to take on all the new customers. Property owners have been trying to get discounts with tactics like switching from individual cans to dumpsters, making changes to their organics recycling or teaming with nearby properties to lure haulers with better economies of scale. But things changed in mid-September, when Mayor Todd Gloria signed a rule change allowing haulers to avoid long-standing penalties for low recycling rates if they simply do more to encourage customers to recycle with education and outreach efforts. Jim Madaffer, executive director of the San Diego County Disposal Association, said he believes the process has gone more smoothly than expected. “It just goes to show how well the city and the industry are working together,” Madaffer said Thursday. He said the only issues have been a limited number of customers who agreed to deals before Gloria’s rule change wanting to negotiate better deals that became available after the rule change. Another financial challenge could face the city, however: More than four times as many customers as expected have signed up for the discounted service they can get by agreeing to use 35-gallon trash bins instead of 95-gallon ones. About 9% have chosen 35-gallon bins. When city officials made their predictions earlier this year, they guessed that only about 2% of customers would. Monthly fees for customers with 35-gallon bins are $32.82, compared with $43.60 paid by customers with 95-gallon bins. That means the city will end up with less total revenue than it anticipated when the City Council approved the new trash fees last spring. If city officials had known so many customers would choose the smallest bins, the prices for all customers would have been a bit higher. About 79% of people have chosen 95-gallon bins, and about 12% have chosen 65-gallon bins, which cost $38.94 a month. Bauer said the city has fielded some complaints about landlords who either ordered too few gray cans to fit all the trash their tenants produce or declined to specify how many cans they need and thus got only one. He said these situations have been relatively rare. City officials have tried to contact such landlords and let them know that the new city regulations require landlords to provide cans with enough capacity to adequately serve an apartment complex. Bauer said the city could send out code compliance officers to issue fines if such landlords don’t order more cans. Meanwhile, officials are close to finalizing a long-awaited subsidy program, with applications likely to be available next month, Bauer said. The city has decided to provide a $261.60 subsidy to about 8,000 customers — half the annual charge of $523.20 for a 95-gallon bin. People enrolled in CalWORKs, Medi-Cal or the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will be eligible. Also eligible will be people earning less than 60% of the state’s median income — or less than $3,170 per month for a one-person household and $6,096 per month for a four-person household. In addition, trash customers who are on a payment plan with the county for their property taxes — meaning they have missed at least one payment — could get a 100% trash subsidy if they meet other criteria. Bauer said city officials don’t want anyone to lose their home because of a trash bill. Customers who get the subsidy could get an immediate revision to their property tax bill, which now includes the new trash fee. Bauer said the city can get revised bills sent at a charge from the county of $15 per bill. The city’s current trash predicament traces back to Measure B, a city ballot measure passed in 2022 that ended the decades-long practice of San Diego providing free trash service to single-family homes and many small townhome and apartment complexes. Details are available on the city’s website. ...read more read less