City Council will consider settlement in trash fee case

The San Diego City Council will consider a settlement in the lawsuit challenging the city’s trash fee during a closed session on Monday.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, attorney Gabriel McWhirter, who is representing the city against a group of local homeowners, told Judge Euketa Oliver during a hearing on Friday that a proposed settlement is “currently on the table” regarding Measure B, which instituted a pickup fee for single-family households after being passed in November 2022.

The proposed settlement comes around a month after Oliver denied the city’s request to dismiss the suit, which argued that the fee violated Proposition 218, the state ballot measure stipulating that the cost of utility fees cannot exceed that of providing the intended services.

In her ruling, Oliver cited the city’s estimate that the fee would increase despite a discrepancy in the amount of households whose service would be affected. The city had originally said homeowners would pay between $23 and $29 a month. That cost was later revised to be around $43 a month in 2026, and an estimated $55 a month in 2027, though some households may qualify for financial assistance.

“The apparent inconsistency between declining service demand and increasing costs, coupled with unsupported assumptions and, at this point, unexplained deficiencies in the city’s analysis, creates triable issues of material fact as to whether the fee exceeds the ‘actual cost’ of providing the service,” she said at the time.

The council’s closed session will come a day before opening statements were scheduled in the lawsuit.

The fee had come under criticism from former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has spearheaded a push to repeal it in his current role as CEO of the conservative Lincoln Club.

McWhirter did not return a call requesting comment.