["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla
Light, published August 4, 2025]
2025
The new trash bin system seems
destined to keep me in column material in perpetuity. Alas.
To recap, the City Council voted
6-3 in June to inflict upon 226,000 single family home owners a new trash fee
system that is so convoluted and nonsensical, it will make your head explode.
La Jolla's own City Councilman, Joe LaCava, who should be dispatched to a
desert island where the only food source is rodents, has actually championed
this debacle.
Among the idiocies of this plan:
all the current black (trash) bins and blue (recycle) bins will be replaced
with new bins with sensors. The disposition of the old bins - approximately
one million in total - is the best kept secret in town. They can't go into the
landfill. The city vaguely claims they will be "recycled". To where? Gambia?
Or how? You can t mulch plastic.
This bill of goods was sold as
Measure B (short for "Bait-and-Switch") back in 2022, estimating monthly fees
in the $23-$29 range. The actual costs, which will rise each year, are at
least double that.
And just to add to the confusion,
the charges will appear on your property tax bill, with refunds or credits not
appearing until at least your fiscal 2027 property tax bill.
FAQ of the year: No, you can't opt
out and hire your own service.
By the way, don't even think of
trying to put one over on these evil geniuses. To make sure that the trash
folks are only picking up bins from (over)paying customers, the new sensored black/trash
bins will now be gray, and the new blue/recycle ones a lighter blue. Given
that the green (green/yard waste) are all relatively new, these aren't being
replaced.
Every household is required to have
at least one trash bin, one greenery bin, and one recycle bin whether you
need/use/want them or not. More importantly, you're required to pay for them.
In perpetuity. On your property tax bill.
If you don't have space for the
regulation size 95-gallon bins, you can opt for a 65-gallon bin, or even a
small 35-gallon bin. But except for the black-soon-to-be gray trash bins
(which will cost slightly less), you still have to pay (forever) the full
95-gallon bin rate for the green and soon-to-be-lighter blue ones.
According to the ES flier: "Customers
that select the 35-gal or 65-gal service level for their trash [italics
mine] container will receive a credit on their Fiscal 2027 property tax
bill for the difference between the rates associated with their selected
service level and the 95-gal service level for the period of time between when
the customers subscribed to and received the smaller containers and the end of
Fiscal Year 2026." [Translation: you re going to be charged the maximum rate
and wait at least a year to get this credit.]
Are you screaming yet?
The affected home owners have until
September 30 to select what size black-now-gray, blue-now-lighter-blue and
green bins they would like delivered, starting October 6. A flier with
instructions arrived in my mailbox on July 22 on how to set up an account on
wasteportal.sandiego.gov.
My flier came with a designated
10-digit APN number for our address which turns out to stand for (not that it
said this anywhere on the flier) "Assessors Parcel Number" along with a
10-digit "Unique Code" (combination of letters and numbers). But before you
utilize any of that, you need to set up an account on wasteportal.sandiego.gov
with your own password.
Is it a requirement of the City of
San Diego to only hire IT people who graduated DEAD LAST in their computer
science class? The site was, at least initially, a complete mess.
None of the three bundle options
(combinations of sizes of bins) worked for my household, which requires two
95-gallon green bins (big yard), one 65-gallon trash bin (we're retirees), and one
35-gallon recycle bin (space limitations).
The closest was Bundle 2 which
included two 95-gallon bins, and one 65-gallon bin to which I had to add on the
cost of the 35-gallon bin from the chart below the Bundles Options.
At least a temporary problem is
that we currently have two 35-gallon recycle bins because recycling is
currently only every other week. But weekly recycling (Bait and Switch #86
from Measure B which made it a selling point) isn't scheduled to start until
summer of 2027. I didn't want to be paying for two recycle bins in perpetuity
when there would be a point when we would only need one. So for a while, after
our new 35-gallon sensored bin is delivered, we will be throwing away a lot of
what we previously recycled until weekly service starts.
But back to the
wasteportal.sandiego.gov site.
On July 22, I did successfully create
an account and password and then sign in with my 10-digit APN and Unique
Code. But that was pretty much the last success I had. Please keep in mind
that I did this on the first day that the fliers were received. This is always
a bad idea. With any new software, you should allow time for the glitches to
work themselves out.
I was able to select my bin sizes
OK. I was given the option of inputting a mobile number so that I could get
text updates. This seemed like a good idea since I want to make sure that
these thieves do not confiscate our current two 35-gallon recycle bins which we
personally paid for from Home Depot at a cost of $120 each after the city
trucks destroyed the ones they'd issued but had stopped carrying that size. They're
mine and you can't have them!
But the site would not let me input
a phone number or sign up for texts.
There was also an option to select
a Secondary User (say, a spouse). Sensing that Environmental Services wants to
push me into an early death, I indicated my husband Olof. I received an email
from the city indicating that he had been signed up.
They also queried and may I say,
I nearly fell out of my chair laughing: "Would you like to donate an
additional amount to help provide trash services for those needing financial
assistance?"
Hell no! It's not like I don't
have sympathy for the less fortunate but one of the promises our City Council
made in June was that a fund of $3 million was being designated for precisely
such persons. So why are you trying to wring it out of me?
The details about how the less
fortunate are to access some financial aid on the new trash fees seems just as worrisomely
vague as the recycling of a million pre-owned trash bins. As in "to be
determined."As in "we have no idea how this will work and you will probably
have to wait two years to get a credit on your property tax bill."
But the wasteportal people did
email me a confirmation that I have elected not to make a donation. You could
feel the word "miser" oozing through the ether.
I couldn't make the input mobile
number option or the opt-in for texts work at all so I finally gave up and used
the "contact us" button to inform them that there were problems with these
features.
A few hours later, I logged back
into my account to see how everything looked only to have it indicate that (1)
I had not selected bin sizes (despite an email confirmation of my choices) and
(2) I had not selected a Secondary User (even though I tried it twice and
gotten not one but two confirmations that Olof was my secondary user.)
Olof, an engineer, suggested that I
wait 24 hours to see if the wasteportal site would catch up.
The next morning, July 23, there
was indeed one improvement: it was now indicating my bin sizes. But still no
option for the mobile number, text opt-ins, and really annoyingly, it was still
insisted that I hadn't opted for a Secondary User despite two confirmations the
day before. So I tried signing Olof up a third time.
I also contacted them again and
reported these failures.
Some hours later, Olof reported
that he had received three separate emails from the city with three
different 10-digit Unique Codes indicating that he was a Secondary User. We had
no idea which code was the right one.
On July 24, I was happy to receive
the following message from a Public Information Clerk at Environmental
Services:
We have recived [sic] word from
the tech department that the system is back up and running. [Was it ever either?] Please
try again. If you have any issues, please give us a call at 858-694-7000. Where
you will be put on hold for six hours. (OK, that last part was mine.)
I logged back into my wasteportal
account again and was pleased to see that I now actually could input a mobile
number! And opt-in for texts! But it was still showing that I had not
selected a Secondary User.
I replied to the Public Information
Clerk reporting my success but asking her to please alert the tech folks that
my account is still showing no Secondary Users despite the Secondary User in
question having received three confirmations with different unique codes and
by the way, which was the actual one?
I received an auto-reply saying,
Due to the high volume of emails we receive [I bet!] we appreciate your
patience as we work to respond. If sufficient information is provided, we
will create a service request on your behalf. Please see the link below for
everything you need to navigate these updates smoothly and ensure a seamless
transition.
Seamless? This is a giant goat-f--k.
But ever optimistic, I logged back
into my account daily but it was still showing "No Secondary Users have been
selected." I sent yet another query on this.
I will give the wasteportal.gov
folks some credit: They do reply. Not for at least several days but you
will get an answer. And I am certain that these poor folks were not the
architects of this idiocy.
As noted, I had received three
confirmations by email saying "This is a confirmation that [my husband] has
been successfully added as a Secondary User" as had Olof. So I had thought I
was done. But I didn't read far enough. At the bottom of the confirmation pages,
it noted: "An email will be sent to the Secondary User with further
instructions." (italics mine)
As the wasteportal folks informed
me several days later in reply to my query: For a secondary user to display
on a property, they need to open a portal account and use the unique code they
were sent via email. Until they do, they will not appear on your portal
account.
So Olof had to create his own
wasteportal.sandiego.gov account including his own password, different from
mine. From there, he could use the unique code (we randomly picked one of
the three and it worked) to associate himself with our address and bin choices.
And low and behold, he is now showing up under my password as a secondary
user.
I'm exhausted.
But not to worry. If you don t do
anything, you'll automatically get charged for three 95-gallon bins (one of
each color), and provided with new gray (née black) and light blue (formerly
darker blue) cans. (You're assumed to still have your green one.)
I'd like to revise my wishes for
our City Councilman, Joe LaCava. I hope the rodents are the gray ones with
long tails that carry Hanta virus.