Garbage bills in this SLO County city will increase by nearly 40%: ‘A huge hardship’

Garbage bills in Morro Bay will increase by nearly 40% this month.

The Morro Bay City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to increase garbage rates by 38% after exploring other ways to reduce costs.

“Rates are going up all over our county. We have a lot of people on a fixed incomes. This is going to be a huge hardship,” City Council member Jen Ford said. “It’s going to be hard for me to face my neighbors in the grocery store.”

The city mailed letters notifying Morro Bay ratepayers about the proposed rate hike on Aug. 23, according to Morro Bay management analyst Janeen Burlingame.

Residents had until the Tuesday meeting to submit letters protesting the increased fees. If 50% plus one ratepayers objected to the increase, it would have been canceled.

A total of 2,680 ratepayers needed to submit written protests in order to cancel the rate hike, Burlingame said. However, only 723 customers wrote in to protest the change.

The city’s last garbage rate increase was 9.1% on July 1, 2022, and helped compensate the service provider for the cost of truck replacements, updating its organics program and funding an anaerobic digester facility, according to a city report.

Why are garbage rates increasing?

Morro Bay Garbage Service, an affiliate of Waste Connections, has a contract with Morro Bay to collect garbage and recycling in the city.

On Dec. 5, 2022, Morro Bay Garbage Service applied to the city for a 30.6% rate increase to cover a $956,532 budget shortfall, according to Burlingame.

After negotiating with the city, the company agreed to a base rate increase of 20.2% to start on Sunday.

The base rate increase accounts for wage bumps for employees, spikes in material costs caused by inflation, and reduced revenue from recycling, according to Burlingame.

Morro Bay Garbage Service also requested an additional temporary rate increase of 18.4% to recover revenue lost during rate negotiations, as the company intended to start the rate hike on March 1, Burlingame said.

The temporary rate increase will expire on July 15, 2024, according to Burlingame.

The two rate hikes add up to 38% for Morro Bay ratepayers.

Starting Sunday, the monthly bill for a 19-gallon garbage can will jump from $15.39 to $20.36, according to a city report.

For collection of a 32-gallon garbage can, the monthly bill will spike from $24.95 to $32.59 on Sunday, the city report said.

How could city reduce garbage rates?

Proposition 218 requires garbage collectors to charge all ratepayers the same amount of money for the same service, Waste Connections representative Jeff Clarin said at the meeting.

This means that Waste Connections cannot offer reduced rates to customers with a lower income, he said.

Ford suggested that Waste Connections provide ways for customers to bring their trash to a pick-up point in the city for a reduced rate — rather than paying the higher rate for curbside trash collection.

Waste Connections already has two cleanup weeks per year, one in October and one in February or March. That’s when the company will collect an extra six bags of trash from each ratepayer at no additional cost, Clarin said.

During the rest of the year, customers have the option to take their trash to the dump, he said.

Council member Cyndee Edwards asked if there were other waste haulers in the county who charge lower rates.

According to Morro Bay Public Works Director Greg Kwolek, the city is bound by a contract with Waste Connections until 2040.

Even so, rates are lower in Morro Bay than in North County, which is serviced by another hauler, Clarin said.

Collection of a 19-gallon garbage can will cost $20.36 in Morro Bay, but costs about $37 in North County, according to Clarin.

“One of the things that we prided ourselves on was we always charged the low-cost service,” he said.

Morro Bay resident Terry Simons suggested that customers line up their garbage cans on one side of the street to reduce trips for the hauler — which would hopefully reduce costs, he said.

“There must be ways that we can help our garbage collector minimize or reduce their workload,” Simons said. “If the cost of providing that service is based on what the service requirements are, then really the only way that I think we can reduce the contract is to reduce the service that we’re asking our provider to do.”

Ford asked Waste Connections to inform the city of any other ways it could reduce the cost of garbage collection.

“It’s a vital service. We want to keep our city clean,” Ford said. “If there are other ways that you see within the industry that we, as a community, can save you costs ... I’d love for that to be communicated to our staff.”