As The New Trash Bins Turn: The City Isn't Making This Easy

["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.

 

 

 

 

 

Internet Fail Purchases (My Yak Sweater)

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 21, 2025] ©2025

Now that Olof and I are retired, our sartorial style can best be described as “early orphan.”  The vast majority of our wardrobes come from either LL Bean or Lands End. 

It helps that we know what sizes are going to fit us so we rarely have to return anything.  And for Olof, so long as it’s blue, it’s going to be fine.

Let me be clear that there is nothing inherently orphan-ish about these brands which we think produce very nice and functional clothing for the price.  It’s that we wear them until they’re practically rags.  Especially one of us, who is not me.

What I eventually have to do is spirit the latest ratty sweatshirt out of Olof’s closet and pretend it is in the wash until he finally forgets about it, and is forced to wear the second rattiest sweatshirt he owns.  “Olof,” I say, “we are not poor.  I am afraid people are going to start leaving clothing donations on our front porch in the dead of night.” 

In his defense, I have been known to over-wear certain favorite garments myself but never to the degree that he does.  We both had to wear office clothes for so many years that I think we’re reveling in not having to wear anything that has recently seen an iron. 

My older granddaughter has observed that I dress like a barista from a lesser trattoria.  Hey, black and white works! It goes with everything!

But every once in a while, I go wild and crazy and order from other sites than my usual ones.  Such was the case recently when I saw what looked like a really pretty cashmere sweater on sale at a shockingly low price.  The return instructions seemed deliberately vague.  If you needed to return it, you were to contact a specific website for “further instructions.” 

That should have warned me right there.  In my defense, it looked like an American company – OK, it had a very American-sounding name – but I was puzzled as to why it was taking forever to come.

A month later a package showed up from China with all manner of foreign stickers on it.  I had a bad feeling about it.  

Now the China part wasn’t necessarily bad.  Apparently the finest cashmere comes from the soft fiber combed from the underbelly of Mongolian goats.  Such animals are not to be found in the Continental US but reside just to the north of China.   

I’m not on social media but from time to time on the internet, people will post photos of what they think they ordered and what actually showed up. 

As soon as I opened the package, I was sure it was a mistake.  It bore no resemblance in either color or style to the pretty sweater I’d ordered.

One thing was clear: this hairy garment was not cashmere.  No Mongolian goats had ever had their bellies combed in its creation.  So what hirsute creature had contributed to this apparel? Yak?  Gnu?  Yeti? 

Personally, I’m going for yak. 

There were absolutely no tags in it indicating the company that made it and definitely no label for the care of fine faux-goat fabrics of a yak-Yeti-gnu persuasion. 

Unfortunately, it photographs far better (and less hairy) than it looks in person – which, of course, is how I got suckered into buying it.  Trust me when I say that this is one ugly, shapeless garment. One can only wonder if it started out as roadkill. 

I have to say I’ve been duped on a few other China purchases, which like this one, didn’t indicate on the website that it was coming from China. 

I ordered a digital thermometer during the pandemic since there were none in existence in any pharmacy in the Continental U.S.  But Amazon seemed to think it could provide me with one.  It finally showed up from China three months later and was Centigrade-only.  Not even a conversion chart.  The battery was also dead, probably having succumbed during the slow boat trip from Asia. 

I also got duped on some bamboo compression socks.  Now, bamboo is not grown in quantity in the U.S. so you have to assume it’s probably coming from a place where bamboo IS grown, like China.  I’m sure there are a lot of legitimate and very therapeutic bamboo compression socks out there, but these weren’t among them.  Once again, they took forever to come and came in packaging that was entirely in Chinese lettering.  Even though I had ordered according to the size chart on Amazon, I don’t think these socks could have fit a five-year-old.  If I’d read the fine print on Amazon’s site, I would have seen the notation “frequently returned item.”  Um, yeah.  Not sure why Amazon is still entertaining these folks as suppliers. 

I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my yak-Yeti-gnu sweater.  I have to say that my first reaction on opening it was “Goodwill bin!”  As I suspected, the return options were basically, “it’s yours now, sweet cheeks!”  And since it wasn’t Amazon, there wasn’t really any recourse.  The yak-gnu farm in China clearly didn’t want it back, nor the vehicle that originally ran it over. 

Meanwhile, it’s time for me to spirit Olof’s favorite sweatshirt into the trash.  Even Goodwill would be insulted. 

In person, this is one ugly, hairy, shapeless sweater - and definitely NOT cashmere

Olof will wear pretty much anything, so long as it's blue.

By the time you read this, Olof's favorite sweatshirt will be on its way to the dump.

 

 

World's Most Pathetic Family Photo Album

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 14, 2025] ©2025

I was recently in search of a family photograph that might have included all five members of my family – my two siblings, my parents, and me.  And once more, I was having to face the fact I came from a family of deeply inept photographers. 

As much as I loved my parents and siblings, they were profoundly challenged camera people. (How did I escape this gene?) Virtually all my childhood family photos are blurry black and whites taken from waaaayyy too far away and/or totally off center.  There’s lots of sky. Mom, Dad, sibs, that thing called a viewfinder?  That’s why they call it that.

I think one of the reasons I became such a devoted documenter of my children is that my own parents took so few photos of me.  I’m trying not to take this personally. Partly, it was the era: at the time, color photos were a rarity and most people only had crummy black and white Brownie cameras that took abysmal pictures. Generally speaking, we only took pictures on special occasions, like Easter, when everyone was dressed up. 

Not, of course that you could tell.  The pictures are generally so fuzzy that I wouldn’t even swear they were our family if they weren’t in my own photo albums. 

Like many people who feel they were deprived of something in their formative years, I may have overcompensated with my own kids.  When my younger son and then-fiancée wanted to do a slide show for their wedding, I hauled some 60 albums out to the dining room table.  I swear my daughter-in-law said under her breath, “I hope this isn’t hereditary.” 

In fact, the kids had long been threatening to cremate me after my untimely death with those 60+ photo albums – an entire bookcase - that I had amassed over the years. It would be a two-fer; get rid of Mom and the albums all at once. 

A few years ago, I put together a 400-slide show of Olof and me to mark a milestone birthday.  Afterwards, there were wonderful toasts made – my younger son Henry gave a 4-hanky tribute to both of us. I gave a toast to Olof, commenting on how different this evening would have been had Olof not come into our lives. Both kids simultaneously chimed, “200 fewer slides?”

I am proud to report that during the pandemic, one of my projects was to cull my 65 albums to 32. But that’s my final offer. For me it is heartbreaking to part with a single photo. It’s like erasing history.

I think it’s appropriate to discuss the role of the family photographer which is about as unappreciated a job as there is.  Year after year, occasion after occasion, there is nothing but complaining as the (self-appointed) family archivist attempts to herd the surly assemblage into some kind of order and snap a few pics for posterity. 

Does anyone say thank you?  I think not.  Years later, of course, everyone loves looking at those pictures, pointing out hair and clothing styles, but more often than not, focusing on what’s in the background.  Remember that sofa we got from Goodwill?  Oh, look, there’s that Chevy Vega that rusted through in two years.  Wow, the trees were so much smaller.  Did that guy you were dating then ever make parole?  The family photographer basks in a few rare moments of adulation, which will evaporate in a nanosecond as soon as a camera appears.  Photography is the ultimate delayed gratification hobby.  Total abuse in real time.

I suppose if everyone who knows you well tells you have a problem, you should probably pay attention.  My first husband accused me of choosing to photograph life to the exclusion of living it.  My second husband, Olof, mid-way through our two-year work assignment in Europe several years ago, maintained that the vows in his third marriage would include capping his bride to 25 digital images per day, pro rata, as long as they both shall live.   Even my younger son refused to allow me to have a camera in my hands on his wedding day.  I kept nudging the photographer: “you’ll really want to get a shot of that,” I said.   My first grandson referred to me as “Grammy Camera.” 

Maybe it’s just as well my parents never took many pictures. I guard that tiny handful of pathetic pics carefully in one small thin album.  But I am leaving my kids with (now) 32 photo albums and some 6000 digital images, never mind hundreds of slides.  Every time they walk into my bedroom and see that bookcase with all the albums, you can see the sweat break out on their brows.  Yeah, you can put photos on CDs but honestly, you’d never look at them.  Photos are meant to be shared in albums over a cup of cocoa, or depending on your haircut in that era, several bottles of wine.  Besides in ten years, no one will be able to read the current CDs.  So maybe CDs ARE the ultimate solution:  self-expiring photo storage.

At this point, I’ve handed over the mantle of family photography to the kids although I still take a few snaps of the grandkids when they visit.  It’s sort of like my own methadone program.  I’ve sorted through the slides and picked the ones I want to keep but even I am not sure what to do with all those photos.  I really don’t want to burden the kids after my demise.  Fortunately, neither of them is as pathologically sentimental as I am and are maybe just not wanting to utter the word “dumpster” while I’m still breathing. 

 

Here is our Easter Sunday family portrait - off center,

blurry, and with a tree branch going through my mother's face

Dad took this picture of my mother at Cape May

Mom took this picture of my younger sister from waaay too far away

Mom took this off-center blurry pic of my younger sister and me

 

Olof Joins The Sighted

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published July 7, 2025] 2025

Not to disparage a man I have loved and been married to for decades, but he is truly the worst patient ever.

My husband has always had a "Do not feed the lions" approach to health care and will deny all symptoms even for an affliction he actually sought medical care for. So I'll say, "What did Doctor Death say about your esophageal paralysis?"  And he'll shrug, "It didn't come up. 

My husband has had two separate cancers, along with a heart attack exacerbated by a serious head injury when he did a face plant into the armoire en route to the floor, milliseconds after insisting, "It's just heartburn!"

So talking him into undergoing the cataract surgery that he desperately needed was a multi-year battle.

Olof is a former Air Force pilot, an occupation for which one needed perfect vision, so getting him to accept that his eyesight was failing has been difficult. It had always given me an added feeling of security over the years when we were on commercial flights knowing that Olof could probably land many large aircraft in an emergency. But after a certain point, I came to realize that this would only work if he remembered to bring his reading glasses into the cockpit. Otherwise he'd be asking the flight attendant, "Does that say "up"  or "down"?"

Right around the time that Olof turned 40, I began to notice that he was leaving 70% tips at restaurants. Olof is a generous tipper but it dawned on me that the basis of his largesse was that he could no longer read the bill. This got even worse when we lived in Sweden and many of the restaurants were so low light that I'd have to read him the menu. The waiter would arrive and inquire, "And what will your father have?"  (Olof and I are exactly the same age).

Olof was the senior engineer at his company so I was surprised some years ago to get a call from a member of his team who pleaded with me to make Olof get reading glasses. Given how technical the data was on the projects they were working on, the inability to read specifications was making meetings increasingly problematical.

Maps were probably the biggest problem of all in the pre-phone app era. When we lived in Sweden, we traveled a fair amount. Fortunately, Olof had a seeing-eye wife who wore progressive lenses so that when Olof and I got really, really lost and ended up in parts of Old Tallinn that probably even the Estonians have forgotten about, I could actually read the fine print on a map. Even though Olof was by this time the owner of reading glasses, they somehow always ended up getting left back at the hotel whenever he and I are strolling around a new city. He may have been bludgeoned into getting them, but he was never going to admit he needed them. 

But over time, the necessity for reading glasses and even computer glasses came to be a part of his life, as did not being able to find any of the 10 pairs that he owned at any given time. He didn't matter how many pairs we acquired. Three months after I sold my former car, the neighbor who bought it called me and said he had found a pair of my husband s reading glasses under the front seat. 

Fast forward into the retirement years. Olof was admitting that driving at night and in rainy conditions was getting harder. He went to renew his driver's license and the DMV eye test lady said, "I m going to pass you this time, but it's a gift."

Three years ago, I started booking him appointments along with me when I went for my own yearly eye exam. The opthalmologist said, "there is no way on God s green earth you would pass a DMV eye exam at this point. You need cataract surgery."

So you re thinking Olof said, "Yes. Of course. Sign me up."

But you would be wrong.

Given our ages, we had a number of friends who had had cataract surgery, every one of whom raved about the difference it had made and how happy they were they had done it. They could see! Colors regained their actual hues and shapes their actual dimensions. It was so easy, they said. You do one eye, then the other two weeks later. The most annoying part is a month's worth of three different daily eye drops in each eye afterwards.

But three annual eye appointments went by before Olof finally consented to the surgery. He kept telling our wonderful opthalmologist that he would "think about it  and get back to her" which is Olof-ese for "you'll never hear from me again."

I've always felt that since Olof is a grown man, I should give him the respect to allow him to make these decisions himself. Even if it meant that my life, and his, and those of everyone else on the road were in extreme danger, especially at night or in the rain, or God forbid both. 

But finally I'd had enough. I called and made him an appointment with the opthalmologist and told her Olof was ready to proceed. "Really?"  she said, genuinely surprised. "He agreed?"

And when I informed Olof of "his"  decision, I was expecting pushback. I had all my arguments ready. I had rehearsed. But before I could get two of those words out, he said "okay."

I was shocked. "What do you mean, 'okay'?"  I said, suspicious. 

"I mean, okay, I'll do it,"  he replied.

Both eyes have now been done. I kept a detailed chart on the front of fridge for the schedule of all the drops. The morning after the first surgery, he could read the newspaper with no glasses. It was a miracle. The second eye went just as well.

I'm obviously incredibly pleased and relieved. The streets of San Diego are safe again. Olof has become one of the world's foremost proponents of cataract surgery.

But could we have done this three years ago?

 

Who's going to clean all this? Not me!

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published June 23, 2025] 2025 

We are all products of our upbringings. I grew up in the post-World War II era where women who had been in the work force could now be home raising families and aspiring to keeping an immaculate home.

My rabidly feminist mother was having none of it.

While we lived in an upper middle-class neighborhood in a commuter town outside of New York City and she didn't have to work, my mother was desperate to use her skills. Her various occupations, paid and unpaid, included teaching convicts at an area penitentiary and substitute teaching junior high (is there a parallel there?) 

But she was most passionate about teaching ESL (English as a second language) and tutoring, on her own time, many of her students to pass the written driver's exam which in that era had to be taken in English. Given the lack of public transit in our area, a driver's license was essential to getting any kind of good job. Her efforts included teaching them to drive in our car. I think my mother could yell STOP! in eight languages. When we all left home, she went back to teaching full time at the college level.

What she wasn't interested in, however, was cleaning.

Every so often, Dad used to go around and sweep the cobwebs out of the corners with a broom. People didn't commonly have cleaning help in our area then and I'm not sure my mother would have wanted it anyway. Child labor was heavily utilized. I have no desire to ever again strip wax off a floor (thank you polyurethane!) or dust slatted blinds.

Every time a vacuum cleaner salesman would come by, touting his guarantees that the machine could clean anything, Mom would cheerfully invite him in and promise to buy his machine if it could remove any of the multitude of pet-and-child-inflicted stains which formed a continuous stretch of Rorschach-like blotches along the pale gray of the family room carpet. She never had to buy a new vacuum cleaner (we already owned one anyway) and would escort the frustrated salesman to the door looking distinctly apologetic.

I am her daughter. And I have similar conversations with my husband. 

Olof has always maintained that he picked after-dinner clean-up as his retirement chore partly because he read that, in recorded history, no man has ever been shot by his wife while doing the dishes. He never said so out loud but he was also apparently never all that happy with the job I did with them either. (We can put someone on the moon but we can't invent a machine that cleans the counters, stove top, and sink too?)

I truly feel that spending a half hour on kitchen cleanup is time that could be used far more wisely. Like reading War and Peace with a snifter of Laphroaig. Or in my case, People with a glass of Chardonnay.

When Olof is done, the stove top is spotless, the counter tops positively sparkle, and you could be blinded by the shine in our stainless-steel sink. And then listen to this - he sweeps the kitchen floor. Whether it needs it or not. As you might guess, our definitions of "needing" vary. Olof will sweep whether you can see a single crumb on the floor. "Part of the job,"  he says.

In my defense, it's not like I never sweep. Just recently I dropped a box of breakfast cereal on the floor which was more than I thought the dog could - or should - eat. As I maneuvered the broom, Olof happened to wander into the kitchen. "Whoa!"  he said, in mock astonishment. "I didn't know you knew how to use that thing!"

From time to time, I cruise the Home and Garden Channel and watch shows about people who are shopping for a house. When I see people oohing and aahing about a 5,000 square foot home with bathrooms larger than our living room and massive foyers and kitchens suitable for restaurants, all I can think of: who is going to clean all that?

Some of these newer homes will have a footed tub inside a shower room . Somebody is going to have to crawl behind that thing. That person would most definitely not be me.

The whole cleaning thing comes up in odd ways. I was reading my grandchildren the Curious George book, "Curious George gets a medal", in which Curious George spills ink on the floor and decides to clean it up by pouring a big box of soap over it then pulling the hose through the window turning the entire room into a lake. On the second to last page of the book, there is the line:  "A newspaperman took [George's] picture and everybody shouted and cheered, even the farmer and his son and the kind woman from next door (who had worked for hours to get the water out of the room)."   (Italics mine.)

I was outraged. Why is the kind woman next door cleaning up this mess? Why not the Man with the Yellow Hat who owns the damn monkey? I explained to the grandkids that he should have taken responsibility for cleaning this up himself rather than foisting it off on some poor neighbor woman who probably got this token mention as an afterthought. She should definitely have been paid going rates and had a bigger shout out than some measly parenthetical thank you.

I had also noticed a blurb in US Magazine back in March about how actress Selena Gomez'  fiance, Benny Blanco, gifted her on Valentine s Day with an entire bathtub of queso, with a trail of tortilla chips spelling out "I love you."   Selena, sweetheart: DO NOT MARRY THIS GUY! I realize you folks have "people", but someone - probably a bunch of someones and almost certainly female someones - had to extricate congealed cheddar from an entire tub. There is not a shop vac on the planet that is that cheese-capable. I can't even imagine that the tub's plumbing ever even worked the same.

Now if Benny wanted to clean it up himself...

 

New Trash Fee System: Your Head Will Explode

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published June 16, 2025] 2025

On June 9, the San Diego City Council voted 6-3 to approve trash fees for 223,000 single family homes as part of Measure B, which was approved by voters by a squeaker margin of 50.5-49.5% in 2022. The actual costs will be double or triple Measure B's estimates and are mired in bureaucratic convolution so mind-numbing it made my head want to explode. Yours will too.

If the accurate figures for these costs had been presented to the voters, it wouldn't have had a snowball's chance of passing. This is exactly why it should have been put to a re-vote. Or at the very least, the fees kept at the level that were voted for.

The city needs money. Duping the citizenry is a pretty low way to get it. Even the people who voted for it didn't vote for this.

I've written two double-length columns on this topic already so I won't cover all the issues involved again. The level of deceit of this entire plan is mind boggling.

The city paid a staggering $4.5 million to a consulting firm to estimate the fees that would be charged. Afterwards, the consultant mea culpa-ed his gross miscalculations with "Sorry. I'm human."  Just wondering if he's giving the $4.5 million back to the city? It could sure use the money.

The affected homeowners were allegedly sent a six-page flier with the details of the new plan and a protest form on page six that could be cut out, filled in, and snail-mailed to the city clerk's office. Most people thought it was junk mail and threw it out. Lots of people (including me, and I was on the lookout for it) didn't receive it. Few people had the fortitude to wade through the soul crushing five pages of details.

For enough protest votes to count, 111,000 people would have had to send that form in. According to the City Clerk s office, "only"  46,000 did.

But wait! While the form asked only for a name, it came out later that the protest form had to indicate the name of the property as listed on county property tax rolls. So if it were a trust, that had to be indicated, otherwise the protest vote wouldn't be counted. Inquiring minds want to know: how many such protest votes weren't counted?

And in the sleaziest move yet, anyone who didn't send in a protest vote was counted as a yes vote for the new fees. This is truly an insult to the democratic process. It was stacked against any possibility of there being 111,000 protest votes.

One of the biggest downsides to the new fee structure is the plan to save billing costs by charging the fees on property tax bills, with adjustments only coming months - or years - after the fact. This is just the wrong place for trash fees to be charged and are pretty much guaranteed to create massive headaches for homeowners. Here s why:

Affected home owners are being offered three bundle options with options to add additional bins at additional cost. Bundle 3, the default option, includes three 95-gallon bins (one green, one blue, one black). In teeny 8-point font below the table are three very important footnotes which should actually be in 16-point bold-face font at the top:

Footnote 1: The City proposes to provide recycling and organics [green bin] collection at the service level of 95-gal containers only. Customers may request a 35-gal or 65-gal recycling and/or organics container at the same time if they prefer a small container for reasons unrelated to solid waste services, for example, if they would like a smaller size due to space considerations. However, all customers will be charged at the 95-gal container rate for recycling and organics collection services. [Italics mine]

Footnote 2: Under the proposed rate plan, the City would charge all customers at the Bundle Option 3: 95-gal container rate during Fiscal Year 2026. Customers will be asked to select a service level and bundled rate option during Fiscal Year 2026. Customers that select the 35-gal or 65-gal service level for their trash container will receive a credit on their Fiscal 2027 bill [italics mine] 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.]

Footnote 3: Customers that select additional containers beyond the initial bundle will receive a debit on their Fiscal Year 2027 bill for the cost of the additional container for the period of time between when the customers subscribed to and received the additional containers and the end of Fiscal Year 2026.

Who in God s name came up with this insane plan? And can they be legally enjoined from ever being involved in city planning again?

Are people in condo complexes subjected to this kind of convoluted billing? Don't think so.

I, for example, need two 95-gallon green bins (big yard), plus a 65-gallon black bin (we're retired, just the two of us) plus two 35-gallon blue recycling bins since that is what fits in our limited space. The City stopped issuing that size blue bin some years ago so after the trucks destroyed the city-issued ones, I had to pay $120 each at Home Depot for replacement ones that are compatible with the city's trash trucks. They're practically new but now about to be obsolete (see below) and replaced with new city-issued bins for which I will have to pay $13.78 (now) per month (going up to $17.74 per month in 2028) in perpetuity.

Why can't I keep my new blue bins? All blue recycling bins and black trash bins are to be replaced and new ones provided with RFID (Radio frequency identification) sensors. I've made several jokes in previous columns about our trash spying on us, wondering if the garbage police will show up if a green bin-designated banana peel is sensed in a black bin, or God forbid, a blue recycle bin. But it is unclear exactly how these sensors will work. The sensors will not be in the green (greenery-food waste) bins presumably because these bins are fairly new. Are these sensors bar codes? Or? Can the city's notorious trash bin-destroying trucks disable them? Can people steal other people's bins so that someone else is being charged for your trash? Honestly, I haven t been able to find out any real information about how they will work.

A really really important question that hasn't been addressed in all this is what happens to the half million to million old blue and black bins that are going to be replaced, especially if one of the motivations of the new system is supposed to be landfill reduction, A June 8 article in the Times of San Diego noted: A million plastic containers will be recycled and a million new ones will be purchased. California's lawsuit against big oil companies over plastics recycling tells us they will be burned. This is a horrifying possibility.

The same article queries: Can't we simply attach RFID chips to the existing bins?

The fee structure doesn't take into account people, say, retirees living alone who generate very little trash. You're paying anyway.

By the way, the weekly recycling program that was a draw to many isn't scheduled to start until the summer of 2027.

As for poor people or those on fixed incomes, the city documents proposes setting aside $3 million for a financial assistance program that would provide a full subsidy for about 2% of customers, a 50% subsidy for 3.5% of customers, and a 20% subsidy for 10% of customers. How that will all work out in reality is still being determined. And here s the deal: you re probably going to have to pay up front now and wait a considerable amount of time for a credit on your tax bill.

The three City Council members who voted against the new fee plan are Raul Campillo, Henry Foster, and Marni Von Wilpert. Those voting for it are Sean Elo-Rivera, Jennifer Campbell, Kent Lee, Stephen Whitburn, Vivian Moreno, and La Jolla's own City Councilman Joe LaCava, who has been an active supporter of this perfidious plan.

I've previously been a huge fan of Joe LaCava in his capacity as a community volunteer and I voted for him for City Council. Right now I wouldn't vote for him for Supervisor of Waste Water Management. Or then, maybe I would.

Twenty-two percent of those 223,000 single family homes have renters in them. They can expect their already-astronomical rents to go up commensurately.

On June 24, the City Council will approve the plan to collect the new fees on your property tax bill, and on July 1 the whole new plan becomes effective.

On May 19, five home owners engaged the services of the law firm of former City Attorney Michael Aguirre to file a lawsuit accusing Mayor Gloria and others of violating Proposition 218, a ballot measure passed some 30 years ago, that prohibits government agencies from charging more for services than the actual cost of delivering those services. The five plaintiffs are asking the Superior Court judge to render the city s previous approval of the trash fee null and void. Is it too late?

I can't even imagine a plan more devious, inept, and just plain unworkable and incomprehensible that could have been inflicted on the citizenry than this one. Regardless of how you feel about trash fees, the whole thing is just plain wrong.

 

 

The Mystery Of The Missing Altoids

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published June 9, 2025] 2025

Today marks my 560th "Let Inga Tell You" column for the La Jolla Light since I began writing it sixteen years ago.

I have to say, the first 250 were the easiest. 

I'm always on the lookout for column material given that I truly, really have no life. So a few weeks ago, when I was out front watering the azaleas and letting the dog run around the front yard, I noticed a very serious-minded young couple intently focused on their phones approach the bike route sign across the street, and suddenly exclaim with jubilation that seemed wildly out of proportion to the circumstances, "Oh my god! Yes! This is it!"

Intrigued, I continued overwatering my plants just to see what it was. It looked a lot like a bike route sign to me. Ignoring the screams of my azaleas to "Turn OFF the hose already!", I watched as the couple felt the metal pole up and down. Then they beat the bushes behind the sign. They even got down on the on the ground and dug around the base. This went on for an hour.

Finally, in my signature shy and retiring way, I queried, "What is it you re looking for?" The wife (I assumed wife) briefly explained that it was a "geo test."  She said they have this all over the world. You get (coordinates?) of something and the adventure is in finding it.

Afterwards, I Googled what I think was the app they were using and got: The Geo Test App is a tool that allows developers and testers to perform manual and automated geolocation testing. It includes 300+ different games to test your map skills. You can simulate user behavior from different locations by testing with secure, private IPs hosted in 45+ countries around the world.

I, of course, being Techno Moron to the Stars, had never heard of Geo Test. It sounds like a digital treasure hunt? Or maybe a cardio Where s Waldo?

Turns out there is no prize, other than the satisfaction of actually locating the item according to the... coordinates? (I am so out of my league here.) No mention of then going to the nearest bar to celebrate. When I was their age, all celebrations involved libations. 

The wife explained that they had successfully located their previous two... whatevers. But this one was truly stymying them. It HAD to be RIGHT HERE. They were SURE of it. 

So, ever the annoying spectator that people who do Geo Tests regard as the downside of their hobby, I pushed on: so are you looking for an actual object? For all I knew, something would ding or buzz or light up on their phones when they'd found the target.

Apparently, there was indeed an actual object they were supposed to locate: an Altoids tin. Presumably empty? You probably know the tag line: "Altoids: Curiously strong mints."  And if you've ever had one, they most definitely are.

As I continued to drown the azaleas in my fascination with the drama across the street, I momentarily thought of offering the services of my dog, Lily, who was deliriously happy at getting all this bonus bark-at-the-gate time.

Dogs, you may know, have an olfactory sense that is literally 7,000 times stronger than humans (although I m not sure how anyone actually measured that). Yes, this was a job for a dog. No way a dog would miss the scent of Altoids. Unless, of course, the scent actually gave the dog a fatal asthma attack with its intensity. 

OK, so maybe not a great idea. Dog noses most definitely did not evolve on scents like mints. In fact, back in column number 404 (June 10, 2021), I addressed the whole issue of the difficulties pet food makers have in making pet foods that smell disgusting enough to appeal to dogs but not so bad that it will repel their owners. Among the "palatants" added to dog food can be such colorless flavorings as "putrescine"  and "cadaverine."   Yum-mo.

I don't think even Altoids could cover up these scents. Which may explain why dogs have such terrible breath.

Anyway, if I understood this correctly from the wife, the whole thing about this Geo Test thing is that you're supposed to find the target but LEAVE IT THERE. The lovely young couple finally had to conclude that someone had swiped it from where it was secured to the bike route sign or the nearby surroundings. Was this Geo Test terrorism? Satellite sabotage? Just plain bad sportsmanship?

Or did some well-meaning local La Jollan on his/her daily constitutional happen to notice an Altoid tin tethered to a bike route sign, sigh in disbelief that people are such slobs, and dispose of it as his/her civic duty? Or hope it had been left by the Mint Fairy and was theirs for the taking? Maybe even mistaken it for a drug drop?

Inquiring and pathologically-over-active minds want to know.

So if you were a fellow Geo Test app-er and maliciously mint-mooched it to thwart your fellow Geo Testers, BRING IT BACK RIGHT NOW!

Alternatively, if you might have been that Altoid-appropriating tin-tampering Samaritan who inadvertently threw it out, the next time you're at CVS, please buy some Altoids, dump the mints, and cable tie it to the bike route sign again. Those poor kids were so disappointed. 

Or maybe I should do it? It might be the most exciting thing I do all week in my (truly, really) non-life. And best case, generate column number 561.