We did 4 Public Records requests:

25-6303,25-6304,25-6773,25-6774

Files:
25-6303,25-6304,25-6773,25-6774

The following Information is based on the requests:

They Promised You $23/Month. They’re Charging You $43. The Documents Prove It Was Rigged.

Four public records requests. Over 160 documents. Internal emails, spreadsheets, contracts, and protest tallies the City of San Diego never wanted you to see.

When San Diego voters approved Measure B in 2022, the City’s own Independent Budget Analyst estimated trash fees would cost $23-$29/month. On June 9, 2025, the City Council voted 5-4 to charge you $42.76/month — rising to $50.94 by 2029. That’s 47-86% higher than what you were promised. And it’s not on a utility bill. It’s on your property tax roll, meaning if you can’t pay, the City can put a lien on your home and ultimately force a tax sale of your property.

We obtained the internal records through the California Public Records Act. Here’s what they reveal — section by section, document by document.

THE BAIT-AND-SWITCH: What They Promised vs. What They Charged

The IBA’s own report (25-10) admits the gap. Voters were told $23-$29. The initial proposal came in at $53/month. After public outrage, they shaved it to $47.59, then $42.76 — not by cutting costs, but by slashing reserves from 25% to 16.7%, deferring programs, and using accounting tricks that guarantee a brutal 23.4% rate spike in FY2028 when the deferred services kick in ($42.76 jumps to $48.32 in a single year).

Where did the extra $20/month come from? The City claims it “discovered” it had been serving 285,000 properties but actually only 222,485 were eligible — meaning 62,515 properties were supposedly receiving service without the City knowing. Spread the same costs over fewer people and the per-household fee magically inflates. Meanwhile, operating costs jumped $25.7 million (from $79.1M to $104.8M) with no independent verification of why.

$103.5 MILLION TO ONE COMPANY — AND THEY NEVER HAD TO COMPETE FOR IT

This is the section that should make your blood boil.

In 2018, the City signed a $3 million contract with Rehrig Pacific Company, a privately-held Los Angeles corporation, for trash containers. What happened next is a masterclass in how government contracting goes wrong:

That’s a 3,452% increase — from $3 million to $103.5 million — through five amendments. San Diego never once competitively bid this contract. Not once.

How? The entire deal is built on a “cooperative procurement” — the City piggy-backed on a contract that Miami-Dade County, Florida competitively bid back in 2016. A contract negotiated for Florida’s needs, at Florida’s volumes, under Florida’s market conditions — adopted wholesale for San Diego’s $103.5 million program.

Here’s the kicker: for a separate and much smaller City Facilities trash contract, San Diego ran a proper competitive bid (ITB #10090234-25-R) and got firm pricing from Allied Waste/Republic Services at $14.5 million over 5 years. The City knows how to run a competitive bid. They just chose not to do it for the hundred-million-dollar contract.

Container prices kept climbing with each amendment — 95-gallon bins went from $52.58 to $57.73 (a 9.8% increase) — and nobody checked whether the prices were still competitive. The Fourth Amendment introduced line items priced at “Market Rate” with no cap, no formula, and no definition. That’s a blank check written on your tax bill.

The City’s own internal spreadsheet (SDPRA-005704.xlsx) shows the real container cost projection:

The debt service on the $41.5 million container purchase alone adds $10 million in interest — paid by you — on containers you never asked for.

Rehrig Pacific is a private company with zero public financial disclosure. We have no idea what their margins are on this contract. What we do know is that one company has a monopoly on San Diego’s container program, has never faced competition for it, and just got handed another $64.7 million.

THE RATE WAS REVERSE-ENGINEERED — INTERNAL EMAILS PROVE IT

This is the most damning finding in the entire records production.

Under Prop 218, a fee must be calculated by determining actual costs of service, then deriving a rate. You calculate costs first, rate second. The City did it backwards.

Internal emails from January 2025 show Jeremy Bauer, the ESD Assistant Director, writing to HF&H Consultants (the firm building the financial model): “I would like to see what rates will look like if we landed on a year 1 negative balance of up to ($15,000,000) or less and a year 2 balance of either up to ($5,000,000) or even a positive number by year 2.”

He didn’t ask “what do our costs add up to?” He asked “what rate do we need to hit my target fund balance?” That’s not a cost-of-service study. That’s a reverse-engineered tax dressed up as a fee.

ENHANCEMENT PRICES WERE INFLATED FOR PUBLIC PRESENTATION

An internal spreadsheet (SDPRA-005829.xlsx) shows the actual estimated cost ranges the City had for each service enhancement — and what they showed the public at open houses:

Every single enhancement was presented at or above the high end of the internal estimate. You never saw the low-end numbers. Two cost items — “Improve Existing Services” and “Add More Customer Service” — were deliberately hidden from public display entirely, marked internally as things the City was “planning to do anyway.”

And to cover the fact that the new fund starts $5 million in the red, the City plans a “one-day loan from another City department” at fiscal year-end to show a $0 balance on paper. That’s not budgeting. That’s an accounting gimmick.

46,132 PEOPLE PROTESTED — THE CITY MADE SURE IT WASN’T ENOUGH

Under Proposition 218, a majority protest (113,249 signatures — 50%+1 of affected parcels) would have killed the fee. 46,132 residents formally protested — the largest Prop 218 protest in San Diego history — but it reached only 40.8% of the threshold.

Why? Because the process was engineered to suppress opposition. A retired attorney with 40+ years of experience filed an 8-page protest cataloguing exactly how:

1. Deceptive envelope — no markings indicating what was inside. Looked like junk mail. Many residents likely threw it away.
2. No prepaid return envelope — ironically, when Measure B was on the ballot, the City included prepaid return postage. For the protest? Find your own stamp, envelope, and address it yourself.
3. Protest form buried on page 6 — after pages of dense single-spaced text designed to be skimmed and discarded.
4. Email and fax protests banned — Resolution R-2025-493 explicitly prohibited electronic protests. In 2025.
5. Return address was incorrect — no comma or line break between “2T” and “San Diego,” causing potential delivery failures.
6. Form didn’t ask for a printed name — just a signature, making it easier to reject protests as unverifiable.
7. Notices sent to 20,369 ineligible properties — then their protests were discarded when the City decided those properties didn’t qualify.
8. Silence counted as consent — if you didn’t respond, the City counted you as supporting the fee.
9. 504 late-arriving protests not counted — many likely mailed on time but were delayed by USPS.

As Dave Elmore of San Ysidro put it: “Why is the city making it so difficult for people to voice their opinion about this proposal? Is it because the city is incompetent or dishonest?”

The resolution certifying the protest results (R-2025-590) doesn’t even disclose the actual count. It just says a majority protest wasn’t achieved. The 46,132 number only came to light through our Public Records Act request.

$75 MILLION IN CITY-TO-CITY CHARGES — NOBODY CHECKED THE MATH

More than half of your trash fee goes to internal City charges that no one independently verified:

The consultants who built the rate study (HF&H) explicitly admitted: “We did not independently verify that information.” They took every City department’s self-reported costs at face value — from departments with a direct financial interest in maximizing their allocations.

On top of that, $52.97 million in SB 1383 bond debt (new green bins and organics trucks financed through 2023 General Fund bonds) is being shifted to the trash fee. That’s debt the General Fund took on — now it’s your problem. And $10.3 million in pre-fee startup costs (consultants, mailers, Salesforce portals) were baked into the rate before a single dollar of service was delivered.

The City’s budget priorities memo is the smoking gun: it stated “trash services to be halted pending the implementation of fees as a cost recovery measure.” Then it listed 10 “trash” budget priorities — none of which are residential trash pickup: Parks & Rec trash collection, La Jolla beautification, river cleanup, downtown trash receptacles, “Cash for Trash.” Under Prop 218, those General Fund responsibilities cannot legally be included in a property-related fee.

THE CITY’S OWN CONSULTANT SAYS OPERATIONS ARE BROKEN

The City paid HDR Engineering $4.5 million for an operational study. Their own findings are devastating:

• 83% truck availability — not a single week in the first half of 2024 where all needed trucks were running
• 1,028 missed pickups per week — 25,750 in just six months
• 58 vehicles (31%) operating past their retirement date
• $49.6 million in lifetime repairs on a fleet that cost $64.7 million to buy
• 96% of maintenance work orders are repairs vs. 4% preventive — an inversion of every industry best practice
• No route rebalancing since 2018 — some routes now take 10+ hours
• The Miramar Yard facility, built in the late 1980s, has been “largely untouched” since 1999 — lifts red-tagged, no hot water, no training rooms

The sequencing is backwards. You’re being charged $42.76/month to fix problems caused by years of City mismanagement. As hundreds of survey respondents wrote: fix the service first, then charge us for it.

THE “PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT” WAS A $1.7 MILLION PR CAMPAIGN

HDR was paid $1,698,000 for “community engagement” — 8,490 hours of consultant time at ~$200/hour. But it wasn’t engagement. It was narrative management.

• No “no fee” option was ever offered. Every survey forced residents to choose between Option A (lower fee) and Option B (higher fee). One resident called it “the force choice survey.” Another called it “a ridiculous, convoluted and manipulative survey leading to SCOPE CREEP and maximizing rate hike.”
• The City’s own Survey 1 found 84% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with current trash service. They charged you $42.76/month anyway.
• HDR tracked media coverage, noted 64% negative sentiment on social media, and recommended having CBOs and council members write letters to the editor supporting the fee.
• Community organizations were paid $1,000 “sponsorship fees” — then their support was cited as evidence of community backing.
• The cost model was still being changed during public outreach. HF&H noted in December 2024 that the model “looks like there are still missing costs and moving costs.” The numbers shown to residents at open houses were preliminary and in flux.
• HF&H’s own president pushed back on the City’s demand for a rushed timeline: “This is a big change from the original plan and I need to understand it better.”

THE LEGAL SHORTCUTS THAT MAKE THIS VULNERABLE

The procedural corners that were cut read like a checklist of how NOT to adopt a fee:

• Environment Committee bypassed — the fee was presented as “Information Item” only. No committee vote. No recommendation. It went straight to full Council.
• Everyone charged the maximum rate — all 226,497 parcels billed $523.20 (the 95-gallon price) regardless of chosen bin size. Smaller-bin customers overpay for a full year.
• 24% container data accuracy — the City’s own presentation admitted only 24% of container data accurately connected containers to paying customers. Eligibility decisions affecting your financial obligations were made on this data.
• 20,369 properties kicked off City service — the City Manager changed the Waste Management Regulation on March 25, 2025, without a Council vote, displacing 56,051 housing units to private haulers at unregulated rates.
• Financial assistance program never adopted — staff presentations tout a “$3M Financial Assistance Program” for low-income residents. No resolution established or funded it. It’s a slide on a PowerPoint.
• The health code may not even apply — Clifford Weiler’s legal protest argues that Health & Safety Code §5470-5473, which the City used for tax roll collection, applies to sanitary sewers, not solid waste. If he’s right, the entire collection mechanism is invalid.
• An amended resolution in January 2026 (R-2026-9) suggests there was a defect in the original adoption that required post-hoc correction.
• The CEQA exemption may be insufficient — the City filed a categorical exemption for “Rates, Tolls, Fares, and Charges,” but the fee funds a $17M cart facility, $4M welding shop, EV pilot, and 1.4 million container replacements — capital projects that may have physical environmental impacts.

WHAT YOU CAN DO — THIS IS NOT OVER

Legal

1. Prop 218 Challenge — Cost Shifting: The budget priorities memo is documentary evidence that General Fund costs (parks trash, river cleanup, downtown receptacles) were shifted into the fee. That’s illegal under Prop 218.
2. Prop 218 Challenge — Notice Deficiencies: At least 9 documented deficiencies in the protest process. Any one could independently invalidate the fee.
3. Prop 218 Challenge — Paying for Services Not Yet Provided: You’re paying in FY2026 for weekly recycling that doesn’t start until FY2028.
4. HSC §5470 Challenge: The tax roll collection statute may not legally apply to solid waste.
5. Brown Act Challenge: 1-2 minute speaking limits and a compressed 48-day timeline (barely above the 45-day minimum) may constitute denial of meaningful public participation.

Political

6. Demand a City Auditor investigation of the Rehrig contract. Five amendments, $103.5 million, zero competitive bidding, “market rate” blank checks — this contract needs independent audit.
7. Demand full transparency on the protest count. The City never publicly disclosed how many people protested. 46,132 people deserve to be heard.
8. Organize before the FY2029 rate case. The adopted rates cover through FY2029. The next rate case is your chance to challenge the entire structure with actual cost data.
9. Target the FY2028 rate spike. A 23.4% increase in a single year for services that don’t exist yet is the clearest, simplest outrage for public messaging.
10. Keep filing Public Records Act requests. The City initially resisted producing these documents. Everything in this report came from persistent CPRA enforcement.

Electoral

The vote was 5-4.

YES — Whitburn, von Wilpert, Lee, Campbell, Moreno
NO — Campillo, Lukas, Foster, Elo-Rivera

As disabled Navy veteran Roy Nguyen wrote to the Council: “We will remember at election time which officials stood up for the taxpayers and which ones treated us like a piggy bank.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

San Diego voters were promised $23-$29/month. They’re paying $42.76 — headed to $50.94. Internal documents show the rate was reverse-engineered from desired fund balances, enhancement prices were inflated for public presentation, and the cost model was still changing while the public was being “engaged.”

The City handed $103.5 million to a single private company through five no-bid amendments — growing a $3 million contract by 3,452% — while charging you $75 million/year in unverified internal fees and shifting $53 million in General Fund bond debt onto your property tax bill.

46,132 residents formally protested — more than any Prop 218 fee in San Diego history — and were overruled by a process structurally designed to suppress opposition: no prepaid envelope, a deceptive mailer, email protests banned, and silence counted as consent.

The City’s own consultant documented a department that can’t keep 83% of its trucks running, misses 1,028 pickups per week, and hasn’t rebalanced routes since 2018 — yet residents are being charged first and promised improvements later.

This is not a cost-of-service fee. It is a cost-shifting mechanism dressed up as one. The documents prove it. And now you have them too.

This summary is based on documents obtained under the California Public Records Act (requests 25-6303, 25-6304, 25-6773, and 25-6774). The full analysis with complete document citations is below.

Share this. Forward it. Print it. Bring it to your next council meeting. The City counted on your silence — 46,132 San Diegans already proved them wrong.