Supervisors approved a substantive 12.1 percent rate increase for garbage service in West Marin on April 10, four months after the San Francisco-based waste collector Recology bought out the area’s former provider.
No one spoke up, either in support or opposition, during the public comment session. But the West Marin rate increase and another garbage rate increase for Marin Sanitary’s Central Marin coverage area, passed by supervisors this Tuesday, provoked the ire of a citizens group called the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, or COST.
The West Marin increase isn’t a surprise. Last December, the county signed an agreement with Recology, an outfit that serves about 725,000 residential customers throughout California, Oregon and Washington State and which last year bought out the Ratto Group, its troubled predecessor in Marin and Sonoma.
The county’s agreement came with the caveat that Recology would seek to boost rates. The company cited its higher operation and labor costs and the need to fulfill contractual obligations with the county that were not currently being met.
The rate rise has two components. Recology requested an 8.8 percent increase, based on the consumer price index, that will bring the price of, for instance, a 32-gallon residential garbage can from $27.09 to $30.37 per month. Though the increase seems steep, Supervisor Dennis Rodoni commented that Ratto lagged in requesting increases for West Marin, making the current ask “a little larger.”
The general manager of Recology Sonoma Marin, Fred Stemmler, told the Light in an email that the 8.8 percent covers C.P.I. adjustments for the past three years and will “cover inflationary expenses such as fuel, oil, parts, equipment and capital purchases as well as labor. Operating a safe fleet requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep and we have seen a considerable amount of deferred work since we took things over.”
The remaining 3.3 percent, a “regulatory compliance fee,” will go directly to county coffers and fund efforts to comply with three new state laws governing waste, recycling and greenhouse gas emissions. (The rate increase passed by supervisors doesn’t cover Bolinas and Stinson Beach, which have separate agreements with Recology.)
Steve Devine, the county’s waste management program manager, said the new state laws “have requirements that flow to the local jurisdictions that we’re not currently equipped to address, in terms of implementation, verification and reporting.”
In 2011, the state passed A.B. 341, which makes recycling mandatory for public organizations and businesses that produce four or more cubic yards of waste weekly. A.B. 1826, passed in 2014, requires businesses to recycle organic waste if they generate a certain weekly threshold. Currently that threshold is at least four cubic yards of organic matter, but that could drop to two yards in 2021 if certain state goals are not met.
Most recently, in 2016 the state passed A.B. 1383, which requires that California reach a 50 percent reduction in organic waste reaching landfills by 2020 and a 75 percent reduction by 2025, using 2014 as the baseline. The specifics of how that state goal will flow to jurisdictions is not yet entirely clear, Mr. Devine said. Currently, stakeholders are meeting to discuss those regulatory proposals.
The 3.3 percent compliance fee for West Marin will generate $62,000 annually for the county. Similar fees the county is passing for its three other garbage vendors will bring that revenue up to roughly $200,000.
The 8.8 percent bump will bring the county $27,500 in extra franchise fees. (The county collects a 15 percent franchise fee from each of its garbage vendors.)
Mr. Devine said the compliance fee could fund staff or consultants, to help ensure that vendors are complying with the new laws.
But the fee—as well as a series of rate hikes for Marin Sanitary over the years—rankled the citizens’ group COST. In a recent opinion piece in the Marin Independent Journal, the group’s founder, Mimi Willard, argued that since the fee goes into the county’s general fund, it can be used for anything. And if it exceeds the costs of regulatory compliance, it could be considered a tax, which can only be approved by voters at the ballot box.
At this week’s supervisors hearing, Supervisor Katie Rice pressed county staff to prepare a breakdown of the fee. “The more transparency we can give…the better,” she said.
During the public comment period, Ms. Willard, of COST, pressed the issue, arguing that a past increase in the franchise fee was used to help fill county budget shortfalls. Now that the county is facing more shortfalls, the fee appears to be another means of doing the same thing. “Show us the math you already did to justify that,” she said.
Matt Hymel, the county administrator, responded to supervisors that the fee would not exceed the costs of regulatory compliance, and Supervisor Rice said the fee should be tracked over time so it is clear how much regulatory compliance is actually costing—especially given the inevitability of further state legislation on greenhouse gas emissions and waste.
Supervisor Rice also wondered, at the April 10 meeting, whether the county would meet the 2020 and 2025 goals set by the state. “Are these bars we can meet? These dates are pretty quickly approaching,” she said.
Mr. Devine replied that he believed the county could achieve “baseline” compliance, but that much of the state’s focus is on organic material, which the county has less control over. He added that with Zero Waste Marin, a separate public agency, “We’re starting to explore a project to look at how to potentially ensure there’s increased capacity for locally accessible outlets for organic material to be composted.”
He also noted, in response to another question from Supervisor Rice on whether tighter regulations would lead to more rate increases, that national issues could affect trash rates. China, he said, is tightening up quality control on recyclables.
“That means more equipment, more people, communicating to customers, maybe telling people you can no longer [recycle] x, y and z that we’re used to recycling now. So there’s a lot coming there,” he said.