The city also wants to start using trash bills to raise money to repair Berkeley’s streets, with the justification that collection trucks beat up pavement more than ordinary cars.
Officials say the rate hike is necessary to pay for several new and rising expenses, including the replacement and maintenance of collection vehicles, the cost of implementing a new state organic waste law and initial work on a planned new facility to replace Berkeley’s 40-year-old transfer station. If the council approves the changes, the higher rates would go into effect starting July 1. The City Council is expected to vote April 11 on whether to launch a process for raising rates, then take a final vote on the plan in June. Public works staff say they have the same concerns, but their hands are tied by a 27-year-old state ballot initiative that limits their ability to set rates that encourage people to use smaller containers. “I’m not sure that that is philosophically in keeping with our Zero Waste goals.” “In some ways, this is upside down,” Councilmember Susan Wengraf said at a special meeting last week to discuss the potential increase.
The potential shift is raising alarms for members of the City Council, who worry it would reduce the incentive for people to use smaller containers, better sort their recycling and compost, and ultimately send less trash to the landfill. Original story, March 10 Berkeley could soon raise rates for trash, recycling and compost pickup, with many homes seeing their monthly bills for the service rise by $30 per month over the next five years.Īnd unlike in the past, when Berkeley imposed bigger rate hikes on those with larger garbage containers, an early proposal put forward by city officials calls for customers with smaller cans to pay the steepest increases. Residents with a 32-gallon container, the most popular size in the city, would pay $30 more per month by the 2028 fiscal year. City officials want to increase trash rates over the next five years. Unless Berkeley receives challenges from more than half of properties citywide, the City Council can take a final vote to approve the increases - which would take effect July 1. Residents have until June 27 to file written challenges against the rates. City officials say state law requires them to structure the increases that way. The proposed rates are slightly different from an earlier version of the plan that was rolled out this spring, but the changes follow the same pattern: Residents with smaller bins are in line for bigger increases to their collection charges. Update, May 22 Berkeley is moving forward with a proposal to raise waste rates, and has sent notices to residents about the potential hikes. The Berkeley City Council is considering a plan to raise collection fees for trash, compost and recycling over the next five years.
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