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Amid mounting complaints about missed trash collection and a looming fiscal crunch, Houston City Council on Wednesday approved paying for a study that could recommend a monthly garbage fee.
The controversial idea has been proposed and rejected before, but the odds may be rising under Mayor John Whitmire. Officials already have floated a roughly $20 monthly fee.
The new mayor is under pressure to pay for a proposed $1.5 billion settlement with firefighters and maintain services at the same time federal pandemic relief funds are set to run out. To skeptical council members, Whitmire insisted the study will not be used simply to justify a monthly bill.
“It’s all-inclusive – efficiencies, cost-effectiveness, performance,” Whitmire said. “It’s not focused primarily on the garbage fee, but really to see how they’re doing so well with so little.”
An old idea, revived
Houston is the only major city in Texas to not charge a garbage fee, instead opting to fund the Solid Waste Management Department’s roughly $100 million annual budget with tax dollars.
Ever since voters imposed a property tax revenue cap in 2004, however, the idea of charging for trash collection has taken on new urgency.
Imposing a fee long has been floated as a way to relieve the burden on overstretched workers. The city’s drivers pick up trash from 1,300 to 1,400 households per day compared to an industry average of 900, according to Solid Waste Management Director Mark Wilfalk.
Such a fee would bring Houston in line with other big cities. San Antonio, for instance, charges $18 to $30 a month, depending on the size of the bin.
Here in Houston, the idea has proven a political non-starter. In 2019, council members overwhelmingly rejected the idea of a $27 monthly fee. The next year, consultants helped Solid Waste craft a proposal for a $20 to $25 service fee, which went nowhere under former Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Public opinion polling suggests there may be some – but not much – political wiggle room for Whitmire. About two-thirds of residents are willing to pay a $10-or-more monthly garbage fee, according to a Kinder Institute for Urban Research survey conducted from August to September last year.
Support dropped sharply, to 33 percent, if residents were asked to pay $20 or more, the rate city officials say is needed to fully fund the Solid Waste department.
“If the city were to rely entirely on the fee to cover the cost of Solid Waste, then that would put a pretty hefty fee out there that is not as high as other cities around the state, but is higher than what local folks want to pay,” Daniel Potter, the senior director of research at the Kinder Institute, said last month.
Money matters
On the campaign trail last year, Whitmire promised to improve collection but did not commit to a fee. Five months into office, he seems increasingly poised to come out in favor of one.
In March, he announced the $1.5 billion back-pay and collective bargaining agreement with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association. Then, last month, an appeals court found the city has been shorting a drainage and road fund by tens of millions of dollars a year, potentially placing the city into a deeper financial bind.
The action the council took Wednesday was to approve $176,600 in spending for the Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company to study Solid Waste operations. That study did not draw opposition, but two council members cautioned that it should examine more than a fee.
“I hope we’re not just doing this – and they’ve assured me they’re not – that it’s not just to build a case for a garbage fee. Because I don't think people want to accept a garbage fee if they're not going to get enhanced service along with it. That’s the big concern I have,” At-large Councilmember Julian Ramirez said after the vote.
Whitmire said the study will take a broader look at operations, which he claimed have already improved on his watch.
“It has improved in recent weeks, and I think we need to examine that improvement, that positive improvement, and see if they can amplify that,” he said. “I am pretty excited about the study. I think it will come back with some demonstration projects of how we might improve our efficiencies.”
Rising complaints
While Whitmire and other officials say performance is improving, that has not been reflected in 311 data.
Residents have complained about missed trash or recycling collection nearly 47,000 times over the past year, and the numbers have been rising recently.
Over the past four weeks, missed garbage collection was the No. 1 complaint to 311. Residents made 2,235 complaints, 36 percent more than the same period last year. The number of complaints about recycling pick-up jumped 34 percent.
A Solid Waste spokesperson said the department does not collect performance data about trash collection. It recently began collecting stats on recycling pick-up, however, and, by its account, on-time performance is soaring.
The percentage of on-time recycling runs rose from 59 to 80 percent in southwest Houston, from 59 to 72 percent in the southeast, from 57 to 90 percent in the northeast and from 29 to 90 percent in northwest Houston, according to the department.
Wilfalk, the department director, said he believes garbage collection is improving based on conversations he has had with residents. Some of the 311 complaints may be about cans that were knocked over or missed collections that were not the fault of the department, such as bins blocked by cars, he said.
“We’re headed in the right direction, it’s just that we have to identify what additional resources we need, and what impact that will have for the city,” Wilfalk said.
He also pointed to another encouraging statistic, a staffing vacancy rate that has dropped from 25 percent a year ago to 7 percent today. Despite improvements, the department will need more to match population growth, Wilfalk said.
“What I’m realizing now is, even if I fill every position we have on the books, I take that 7 percent down to zero, I still don’t have enough to cover the work that’s out there,” he said. “Again: Growth and development.”
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