Trash fees will surge for many in aftermath of L.A. fiscal crisis

After council vote, single-family homes and others will pay almost $56 a month.

- BY JULIA WICK

MICHAEL BLACKSHIRE Los Angeles Times THE LAST time Los Angeles raised trash fees was in the summer of 2008 amid a global economic downturn.

Many Los Angeles residents will soon be paying significantly more for trash collection after the City Council voted Tuesday to finalize a dramatic fee increase.

The trash program had become heavily subsidized, to the tune of about $500,000 a day, which officials said was no longer viable given the city’s dire financial straits, which left them scrambling to close a nearly $1-billion budget deficit earlier this year.

Having the cost subsidized by the city for so long contributed to that deficit, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.

“It should have been corrected a long time ago,” Szabo said. “If we didn’t get this rate increase, the subsidy would have been more than $200 million this year.”

The city hadn't raised trash pickup fees in 17 years, and a 2016 state law governing organic waste disposal significantly increased operational costs. Large raises for city sanitation workers and rising equipment costs also bumped up expenditures.

Once the new fees go into effect, probably in mid-November, residents of single-family homes or apartments with four units or fewer will pay $55.95 a month per unit.

That sum is more than double the $24.33 a month that occupants of triplexes and fourplexes had been paying, and a roughly 50% increase on the $36.32 previously paid by residents of single-family homes and duplexes.

Those customers put their waste in black bins for regular trash, blue bins for recycling and green bins for organic waste, which are emptied by city workers once a week.