We’ll see how much difference it makes.
Mayor John Whitmire
Houstonians will soon begin paying $5 a month for trash and recycling pickup under Mayor John Whitmire’s $7.5 billion budget, passed 15-1 by city council on Wednesday.
The plan marks a significant shift in how the city funds one of its most visible and troubled services, and makes Houston the last major Texas city to adopt a garbage fee. It also underscores the scale of the city’s financial strain, as officials embrace a rare step – new revenue – to stabilize a budget that pays for police, fire and other core services.
The fee is part of Whitmire’s plan to close a $180 million budget gap, and to help improve waste services. 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.”
Houstonians should expect to see the new fee on their August water bill, Whitmire said in a news conference after the meeting.
Edward Pollard was the only council member to vote against the budget. Council Member Tiffany D. Thomas was absent.
The budget also moves the $134 million solid waste budget from the general fund – fed mostly by property and sales taxes – into the city utility system within Houston Public Works. Waste services will now be funded by water bill revenues, plus a projected $24 million from the new fee.
The utility system also will begin paying the city for its water and sewer pipes using the right of way, funneling an additional $104 million in water bill revenue into the general fund, which is used to pay for most core services like parks, libraries, police and fire.
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Some council members, advocates and community members said the budget plan will strain the utility system, harm some of Houston’s most vulnerable residents and lacks specificity on how the city’s long-struggling waste services will improve. Public Works officials, who now oversee solid waste operations, aren’t scheduled to present the department’s new performance metrics until next month.
Pollard echoed those concerns in voting against the budget, saying the fee is pointless because it will not improve trash service or street conditions and would not provide more affordable housing or reduce homelessness.
“What are we actually getting for the $5?” Pollard said. “Will we get on-time trash pickup? Because if we are going to get that, then I think people would be in favor of that. But the $5 is a patchwork job.”
See here, here, and here for some background. I’ve been saying for a long time that the city needs to raise more revenue, with a trash fee being one of a very small number of viable options for that, and now we have such a fee. So kudos for that, while we wait to see what the effect of the fee is. There’s also a lot of financial engineering in the budget, moving things from place to place in ways that don’t always make sense, which confuses the matter. I think the main metric the residents will have is whether trash service improves, and that’s perfectly valid. We’ll get some regular reviews thanks to a budget amendment, and a bigger test next year when it’s budget time again.