Los Angeles residents, brace yourselves: That monthly trash bill is about to get ugly. The City Council just greenlit a steep increase in trash hauling fees as officials scramble to plug a $1 billion budget shortfall. What was once $36.32 a month for a single-family home\u00a0will surge to $55.95 when the fees go into effect, most likely in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For a city where everything feels like a markup waiting to happen, this one hits close to home.\u00a0Most Angelenos haven\u2019t seen a substantive increase in trash fees since 2008, but now the city says it\u2019s time for trash collection to stand on its own and to stop bleeding the general fund \u2014 in other words, time for residents to pay the full freight.<\/p>\n
RECOMMENDED: It\u2019s about to cost a lot more to park in Los Angeles\u2014here\u2019s what you need to know<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Naturally, people are fuming. How is it fair that basic services that you can\u2019t opt out of are suddenly going to hit your wallet like a surprise tax? Property owners and renters alike are asking what\u2019s changing for their money: Will collection\u00a0be more frequent? Or quieter? Will bins magically expand?\u00a0<\/p>\n To be fair, part of the city\u2019s reasoning is rooted in real pressures: labor and equipment costs are up, compliance with state recycling and organics laws demands more money\u00a0and the rate of return from recyclables has collapsed in recent years. And subsidizing the city’s trash program at $500,000 a day is no longer tenable.\u00a0But those justifications ring hollow if the burden lands squarely on households already stretched thin.<\/p>\n Low-income customers who qualify for the EZ-SAVE<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Lifeline<\/a>\u00a0programs will get a reduction, however. But\u00a0for others just living month to month or surviving on tight budgets, the jump may force hard choices: cut back elsewhere, absorb the hit or complain to a system that has long been pretty tight-lipped about how these numbers were determined.<\/p>\n The trash fee hike isn\u2019t a done deal just yet. It still needs\u00a0Mayor Karen Bass’s\u00a0signature before it becomes official; once\u00a0signed by the mayor, the ordinance will go into effect after 30 days. That means\u00a0the higher rates can\u2019t kick in until at least mid-November. That\u2019s a problem, since the city budget was written assuming the new fees would start October 1. Every day of delay now costs Los Angeles roughly $500,000, and because the council\u2019s vote wasn\u2019t unanimous, the ordinance had to come back for a second reading this week, a bureaucratic speed bump with a $3.5 million price tag. The mayor\u2019s office says she\u2019ll sign it the moment it hits her desk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles residents, brace yourselves: That monthly trash bill is about to get ugly. The City Council just…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":307517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,10336,2961,224,5337,10337,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-307516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-categories-things-to-do","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-news-city-life","15":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115382759219260189","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}