We don’t know yet what this is all going to look like.
Houstonians will learn more about how their solid waste services will improve under Mayor John Whitmire’s proposed trash fee in the next 60 days – likely after city council is slated to vote on the plan, Houston Public Works director Randy Macchi told council members Monday.
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During a Monday budget hearing for Houston Public Works and the Solid Waste Management Department, Macchi said waste services will be measured on five key metrics: tons of tree and yard waste collected, containers replaced or repaired, tons of heavy trash collected, average number of curbside recycling stops completed weekly and total drop offs at waste collection sites.
Macchi said the department wanted more specific service goals to help improve residents’ quality of life and hold the city accountability for its work.
These performance metrics are new, however, and so neither city budget documents nor Macchi’s presentation detailed how the goals solid waste will pursue in the new fiscal year compare to what it has achieved in the current fiscal year.
“We will return within 60 days to present more detailed KPIs (key performance indicators) and historical data,” Macchi’s presentation stated.
The performance indicators solid waste used in past budgets included the rate of trash cans picked up on time, days needed to resolve service requests and illegal dumping cases resolved.
Monday’s discussion did not focus primarily on solid waste services, but Macchi said department leaders had a “wonderful list of things to tackle right away.” He did not detail that list but said equipment would be a focus moving forward.
He also said the city could generate more revenue by managing its waste transfer sites differently. These are regional facilities where city trucks deposit waste that is then trucked to the landfill.
“If we do this right, we may not need to get above $5, because solid waste is a revenue generating machine,” Macchi said. “That’s how you keep business more affordable. That’s how you drive the cost of stuff down.”
See here and here for some background. That was from a couple of weeks ago, not long after the fee was proposed. While this Mayor’s term has been all about keeping details well under wraps, I’m okay with Solid Waste taking some time to figure this out and come back to us when that’s done. It would have been nicer if they could have done it before Council has to vote on the budget, but you can’t have everything.
Council members have their own ideas about the trash fee and Solid Waste services, which they expressed as amendments to the Mayor’s budget.
Illegal dumping
Council Member Alejandra Salinas, with the support of four colleagues, submitted an amendment to transfer $3 million from public works consulting fees to address illegal dumping by hiring more workers, purchasing more equipment, increasing surveillance and expanding hours for neighborhood waste drop-off sites, called depositories.The amendment also would require city officials to provide quarterly reports to the council on staff hired, sites cleared, cameras and signs installed and information about illegal dumping cases.
Financial assistance for solid waste fees
Houston has long accepted charitable donations to the Water Aid to Elderly Residents (W.A.T.E.R.) Fund to help cover the water bills of seniors, people with disabilities and low-income families.A Salinas amendment would let trash customers apply for help from that fund to cover their trash fees. A proposal from Council Member Mario Castillo would dedicate $500,000 in the fund to helping residents who need help paying the new trash fee.
Finance department officials say the fee is to rise incrementally to $25 per month by 2031, though council would need to vote to exceed $5 per month. Whitmire has not committed to do so, saying “we’re not going to do what I would call a genuine garbage fee until we improve services.”
Castillo, and council members Joaquin Martinez and Amy Peck co-authored an amendment that would force the administration to provide a report to the council on whether the utility fund is healthy enough to “reduce, offset, or eliminate” the fee in future years for “those who are disabled, qualified veterans or senior citizens.”
“One Bin” program
Peck and Martinez proposed letting trash and recycling be collected in a single container and separated through an “environmentally sustainable” processing method in hopes of possibly saving operating costs.
I’m a little skeptical of the “one bin” proposal, on the belief that some recyclables – mostly paper and cardboard – will be degraded by contact with most forms of waste. That said, as anyone who has ever looked inside a public recycling bin that is located next to a public trash bin and been unable to tell which is which because nobody bothers to differentiate between them, if this can be done feasibly then as long as it’s done with all waste pickups then I’d be okay with it. My own idea for an amendment would be a “pay as you throw” program, in which you can get a smaller trash can for curbside pickup and pay a smaller fee as as result.
And while the public supports the idea of a trash fee, they really want to keep those fees low.
Two thirds of Houstonians would be willing to pay more in taxes or fees to help solid waste operations, but they’re wary even of Mayor John Whitmire’s proposed $5 monthly fee, a new study from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research shows.
The study asked more than 900 residents which services the city should prioritize and whether they would be willing to pay more to fund them as a part of Council Member Sallie Alcorn’s annual “Your Two Cents” budget survey.
Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department has struggled for years to provide timely service, and 62% of respondents supported paying more taxes or fees to improve the service – but only if that fee was $2 per month.
At Whitmire’s proposed $5 per month “administrative fee,” support dropped to 48%.
Only 27% of respondents said they would support a $10 monthly fee, and just 13% supported a $20 per month fee. Yet a study the city commissioned said the fee would need to rise to $45 a month by 2031 to cover the cost of services.
There was no link in the story, and I couldn’t find anything on the Kinder Institute webpage, so I don’t know what to tell you. Any fee or tax increase requires some kind of explanation to at least help people understand it, even if they still oppose it. We haven’t gotten much of a story on this from the Mayor yet. Given that $5 a month is intended to a be a starting point, he maybe ought to get on with that.