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Dominic Anthony Walsh \/ Houston Public Media<\/p>\n
A newly purchased recycling truck unloads at the city\u2019s recycling plant in late September.<\/p>\n
Houston Mayor John Whitmire will propose an \u201cadministrative fee” tied to garbage and recycling pickup next week, his administration told reporters in April. <\/p>\n
Starting at $5 per month for the first two years, the fee would gradually ramp up to $25 per month. With about 400,000 customers receiving solid waste services from the city, a $25 monthly fee would more than cover the department’s budget of about $100 million. <\/p>\n
Houston’s solid waste facilities have been poorly maintained for years. Only two of five garbage transfer stations are in operation, according to Whitmire’s chief operations officer, Steven David, while the only recycling transfer station hasn’t gotten off the ground. <\/p>\n
Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n “It costs money, capital, dollars to go and improve these facilities,” David told Houston Public Media in April. “We are not able to afford that because the solid waste department, by nature of being in the general fund … competes with all the other really important things that we got to spend our money on.\u201d<\/p>\n The department is currently part of the city’s $3 billion general fund, which relies on property and sales tax revenue to support most city departments, including police, fire, libraries and parks. Under Whitmire’s plan, the solid waste department would become part of the water and wastewater utility, which relies on water fees and would underwrite solid waste services until the proposed administrative fee ramps up. <\/p>\n The garbage fee plans, part of the Whitmire administration\u2019s broader budget proposal next week, were revealed to Houston Public Media in April under an embargo. The embargo was lifted late Thursday, after the Houston Chronicle first reported about the proposed fee.<\/p>\n RELATED: <\/b>Houston’s on-demand heavy trash service on hold as chronic pickup delays continue<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Houston is the only major city in Texas without a garbage fee. The city’s combined fee-and-tax structure is the lowest of all major cities. <\/p>\n In San Antonio, the monthly garbage fee ranges from about $20 to $35. Austin’s monthly garbage fee runs from about $29 to $64, while the monthly fee in Dallas sits at about $40. <\/p>\n Calls about missed solid waste pickup<\/a> continue to plague Houston’s 311 center. Over the past year, the center reported more than 39,000 service requests about missed garbage pickup \u2014 leading the center’s board of service requests \u2014 along with more than 31,000 requests about missed recycling pickup and nearly 25,000 requests about missed heavy trash pickup. <\/p>\n As Whitmire’s administration grappled with a daunting budget deficit last year, the solid waste department saw a $6 million budget cut. <\/p>\n Al Ortiz<\/p>\n Kenneth Munson (left), a worker with the Department of Solid Waste Management, cleans up heavy trash sites in District B as part of the City’s plan to reduce breeding grounds for mosquitoes and subsequently combat the spread of diseases they may carry, such as the Zika virus.<\/p>\n According to internal payrolls obtained by Houston Public Media, the department\u2019s workforce shrank last year from 435 in January to 395 by October. The records showed 16 of the 40 staffers who participated in Whitmire’s early retirement buyout program<\/a> last year worked as truck drivers or operators.<\/p>\n In July and August, the city council approved about $26 million for the purchase of 62 new trucks. David called the move \u201cthe single largest\u201d purchase of new trucks in city history. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was awesome, and that was a quarter of our fleet,\u201d David said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t able to get rid of any of the the old trucks that had 500,000 miles on them. We just moved them to backup trucks. So, we put the new ones in the front, and we still have 500,000-mile trucks that break down pretty frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n He said a new solid waste-related fee structure would \u201callow for long-term fleet, staffing reliability.\u201d<\/p>\n RELATED: <\/b>Houston, we have a garbage problem. Residents are divided on the solutions<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Polling and surveys have found mixed sentiments among Houston residents and voters about a garbage fee. In 2023, the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found<\/a> 58% of likely voters opposed a garbage fee, while Rice University’s Kinder Institute reported<\/a> about two-thirds of residents were willing to pay a “nominal” garbage fee.<\/p>\n In 2019, former city council member Dwight Boykins led the charge to implement a garbage fee to offset the cost of voter-mandated raises for firefighters. He clashed with then-Mayor Sylvester Turner, repeatedly using a parliamentary tactic to delay city business until a range of proposed fees were placed on the city council’s agenda \u2014 at which point Boykins was the only council member to vote for the fees.<\/p>\n![\"Kenneth](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_1830-1000x750.jpg\")
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