Garbage disposal is about to get a little pricier for Palo Alto residents.
The city is looking to raise residential rates by 5 percent in July as part of a three-year plan to match up revenues and costs. Refuse rates had also increased rates by 9 percent in each of the past two years.
The three consecutive increases were spurred by a cost-of-services study that showed that commercial customers were paying more than their fair share for refuse service, while residential customers were paying less. To comply with Proposition 218, which requires revenues to be proportional to costs, the city began to realign both commercial and residential rates. As part of the effort, residential rates will once again rise on July 1, while commercial rates will stay the same.
The 5 percent increase for residential customers will apply to all four cart sizes, which range from 20 gallons to 96 gallons. Under the proposal, which the City Council’s Finance Committee was set to discuss Tuesday night, the monthly rate for the 20-gallon cart would go up by $1.33, from $26.48 to $27.81. Rates for the 32-gallon cart, the 64-gallon cart and the 96-gallon cart would go up by $2.38, $4.77 and $7.15, respectively.
According to a new report from Public Works, the proposed increase is smaller than what staff had in mind a year ago, when officials proposed an 8 percent rate hike this year. Since then, expense reductions by GreenWaste, the city’s trash hauler, and by the Sunnyvale Materials and Recycling Transfer Station, where local refuse gets processed, prompted staff to revise its projections and recommendation.
With the new rate, Palo Alto customers will pay roughly twice the amount per month than their counterparts in Menlo Park, where the least expensive rate is currently $13.99. The new rate would also be well higher than the current rates in Mountain View ($20.05) or Santa Clara ($19.93), according to Public Works. It would, however, remain lower than in San Jose and Sunnyvale, which don’t offer the option of a 20-gallon cart and where the least expensive rates are $32.07 and $38.23, respectively.
Am I the only one outraged by this increase in tax while decrease in service?
In the past year our service has deteriorated tremendously. We have to haul our cans into the street where they are picked up by a mechanical arm which disposes of them in a very untidy manner, often knocked over, wind catching the contents and blowing them everywhere, often scratching cars, blocking bike lanes, often replaced blocking driveways, causing heated discussions between neighbors over the placement of these cans, and the cans themselves getting broken.
For this “service” we have no means of reducing our costs other than using a mini can which is still too big for many of us. We have to pay the tax regardless of whether we are using the service, while on vacation or only need to put the cans out biweekly.
If we could have our cans automatically read when lifted so that we pay for the service we use, our costs would be lower. If there was an incentive to the residents to put the cans out less often and only when full, the service routes would have less cans to lift and the routes could be serviced quicker which would possibly mean less trucks and lower charges.
However, we, the residents, are obviously a bottomless revenue source and enabling us to reduce our costs is not happening. We pay a tax for a service that is abysmal and we have no recourse.
This tax is unfair for a service we can’t tailor to suit our needs. Greenwaste has been an expensive service from the beginning since we gave up PASCO.
Water rates, electricity rates, gas rates, now garbage rates, all going up regardless of how much we reduce. We are penalized whichever way we go.
Is there anything we can do other than cough up whatever they decide to charge us? The answer is a very simple NO.
GreenWaste has laid off half their employees, replaced them with a “robot arm” that breaks the lids off the receptacles, is rude to its customers, refuses to answer emails or return phone calls, leaves garbage and litter all over the streets ( yet the robot arm doesn’t completely empty the receptacles), refuses to empty the garbage if the receptacles aren’t placed just right ( or have been moved, or are too full because they weren’t completely emptied the previous week), and THEN leaves nastynotes on receptacles!
For THIS they want more money?? More money for inferior and snarky service?
Time to tell them NO WAY or the HIGHWAY, Palo Alto!
Ridiculous.
I got my utility bill yesterday, noticed there was nothing about the refunds we’re due for over-charges they discovered more than a month and a half ago There were other statement stuffers so they could have included it and saved on the additional postage.
I added up all the ridiculous surcharges we’re paying and they came to more than 25& of my bill and get siphoned into the city’s General Fund.
We pay a monthly $24.48 Utility User Tax ($8,812,8000 for 30K homes). Then there’s The $22 monthly drought surcharge that earns the city $7,000,000 and that should have been waived due to the recent rains!
Additionally, there’s winter distribution surcharges, monthly service charges, public benefit surcharges, transportation surcharges, meter charges etc etc. (What’s the difference is between the distribution and transportation charges for gas?)
Take a look at your latest bill and if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. And remember all this is BEFORE all the new increased hit! Tell them enough already.
@Res, we need to charge everyone some minimum garbage fee (e.g. mini-can) whether using the service or not, because otherwise there are some people who will opt out and dump their trash at the nearest city park or other public receptacle. That drives up rates and then more opt out, until all of us are driven to find a black market solution.
What’s not mentioned in the article, or the P/W report is why it has taken 20 years for the PAU to comply with Prop.218’s requirement that service costs to the user should be proportional to the amount of service consumed (or commodities in this case).
This failure to comply with the law is another example of how poorly our Utility has been managed over the years. This is not the first time the city government has been caught up with failing to comply with Prop.218 either.
Why doesn’t the CPA militate to keep rates low for the general welfare of inhabitants? Instead, it sure seems CPA and contractors hide behind the Prop. 218, as follows.
“Proportional” just means (fees increase) = k (cost increase), where k is a constant number.
So, for example, a 5% fee increase is proportional to a 2% increase in costs: k is 2.5! Yes, Prop. 218 made us do it!
CPA should work for its inhabitants to keep the constant to 1, fee increase = cost increase, and be a harsh judge on what an acceptable “cost” increase is. Allowing all costs is an invitation for abuse.
Why are our rates twice that of our adjacent neighboring communities?
This seems like a primary indicator that something major is wrong with our utilities department.
Whatever happened to giving us vacation coverage and allowing us not to pay for services we don’t use? Other businesses like newspapers have let subscribers use vacation holds to cancel unused services for decades.
The constant rate increases announced years in advance plus all the added taxes, surcharges and fees are outrageous. Drought surcharges while being warned about flooding and justifying rate increases by telling us we don’t consume enough WHILE sponsoring costly mailings and events telling us to conserve is outrageous.
Utilities makes enough money to transfer about $20 million to the city’s general fund general fund every year. This started some 10 to 15 years ago. Whatever services or property the city provides for the Utilities Department, this is a hidden tax. Now the city has budgeted additional employees etc. and depends on that transfer from our Utilities fund.
Utilities was originally set up for the benefit of the residents, not as a way to funnel money to the city’s general fund.
I used to think GreenWaste had some kind of environmental meaning, now it is apparent
that it just means waste the money of their customers.
Resident:
— Is there anything we can do other than cough up whatever they decide to charge us?
— The answer is a very simple NO.
Is that true? We have a city of geniuses – can no one think of any recourse to end these
more and more frequent increases in the cost of things where the cost of service and
manpower to the company is decreasing, yet we are asked to pay more and more for
less? California residents and consumers used to have a lot more say about price
increases like this.
Is it really true there is nothing we can do?
> Utilities was originally set up for the benefit of the residents, not as
> a way to funnel money to the city’s general fund.
This is not really true. City provided water and electricity came about because some Stanford professors who were on the city council in the early 1900s were unhappy about paying a private provider for electricity, believing that utilities should be owned by the public–a sentiment that prevailed during much of the so-called “progressive” period of our history (1880~1920). Water was also an issue at the time, and there was some hysteria on the council about private ownership of water, also.
Transfer of “profits” from the proceeds of the utilities to the general fund has been going on for a long time. Sadly, that money has never been targeted for tangible items, like infrastructure. For the most part, the money now pays for salary and benefits of employees whose activities may, or may not, actually benefit Palo Altans as a group.
Remember to switch to the smallest and cheapest cans and you’ll save about $20 a month. It’s one of the few ways we’ve got to protest this nonsense.
The last time the city forced us to pay for something we didn’t want and wouldn’t let us return like those silly compost bins the delivery trucks were absolutely packed.
Someone said above that we need a minimum charge because otherwise people will dumb their garbage in commercial bills. Sorry, it wasn’t people doing that; it was commercial BUSINESSES that did that because the city was threatening to go through THEIR garbage.
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