The Los Angeles Municipal Council moved Friday to considerably increase trash costs in order to collect funds and close a budget deficit of $ 1 billion.
During a 10-1 vote, the Council ordered the city’s lawyers to write an order increasing the fees on approximately 740,000 customers, the members of the Council arguing that the City has subsidized the cost of collecting waste for too many years.
The owners of houses and unifamilial duplexs will see their waste costs increase by 54% during the upcoming budgetary year, reaching $ 55.95, against $ 36.32.
The fees for small apartments – those with three or four units – will be increased to $ 55.95, against $ 24.33, each unit paying full costs.
Trash costs will increase each year until 2029, reaching $ 65.93 for all categories.
For houses and unified duplexes, this would be an increase of 81% compared to this year. For buildings with three or four units, the costs for each unit would be almost tripled.
On the bimensual invoices of residents of the Department of Water and Energy, the increases will appear under the line “Solid Resources”.
The largest apartments are not covered by the expected waste costs.
Residents can seek to reverse the costs. Proposal 218, adopted by California voters in 1996, requires that the owners be sent by information post on the costs offered and that an audience will be held at least 45 days after sending.
The costs fail if a majority of owners send written demonstrations.
Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, said that the owners will probably adopt the increase in costs to tenants who renew a lease or sign a new lease. He expressed his concern about the regressive nature of the costs, which will disproportionately harm the low -income residents, as they will pay the same amount as the richest residents.
The member of the Council Adrin Nazarian, who represents the East Valley of San Fernando, expressed a similar concern at the meeting of the municipal council on Friday when he voted “no” alone.
He underlined the spectacular increase that residents of a four units building will see the first year. “This unit will pay as much as a house in the richest parts in the city,” he said.
The members of the John Lee Council, Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla were absent from Friday’s vote.
City leaders said that a program to help low -income residents afford the costs will also be extended, also stressing that the last increase in trash costs was 17 years ago.
Without the increase in costs, the general fund would lose around 200 million dollars in the next budgetary year, because the city subsidizes the trash parties, according to city officials.
The increase in costs is planned because the city is faced with a budget deficit of nearly $ 1 billion and the potential elimination of thousands of jobs in the city. Mayor Karen Bass should publish her proposed budget and her plan to fill the financial gap later this month.
Part of the deficit is due to labor costs and recent compensation increases for certain workers, including for police and firefighters, who were approved by BASS and the Council.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. Friday, castigated the hike of waste costs and accused the bass and the municipal council of mismanagement by excessive expenditure, “unaffordable” employment contracts and “policies that brought the city companies out, resulting in a drop in the tax on business and income tax”.
“The mayor and the municipal council may want taxpayers to strengthen Los Angeles, but it is more likely that taxpayers strengthen Los Angeles,” said the association.
Daniel M. Yukelson, executive director of the Association des Apresses du Grand Los Angeles, said that the owners are “barely hooked” because they are faced with the increase in insurance costs and inflation.
“The city of Los Angeles will simply seize any money at hand at the expense of taxpayers before looking at its own unnecessary and swollen operations,” he said.
Several employees of the Bureau of Sanitation took the floor to support the costs at the meeting of the municipal council on Friday.
Charles Leone, coordinator of the Employed International Union 721 service coordinator, who represents sanitation workers, told the council that the costs should have increased “decades ago” and described the hard work that was going to take the trash.
“They took the crisis of the homeless-head-on, they take out the garbage every day, they lift the mattresses every day, they are addressed to the sofas every day, the list is growing again and still,” he said.
Last year, the Council increased the sewer costs for all owners. The owners who have units that are stabilized to rent – the vast majority of city units – cannot generally transmit water costs, which are linked to the sewer costs, to their tenants, according to city officials.
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