The San Diego City Council on Wednesday hedged its bets in a private meeting, agreeing to partially reduce trash fees for single-family homes and roll back entirely paid parking in Balboa Park instead of potentially losing all the revenue in messy lawsuits.
The decision is a win for opponents of the controversial fees, but also represents a compromise by requiring a collection of homeowners suing the city over the trash fees to drop efforts to repeal the fees via ballot measure this fall.
However, it also leaves the city to find the lost revenue — or slash existing services — from somewhere else, as a tense budget process for Fiscal Year 2027 enters its final weeks.
The homeowners sued the city following the passage of Measure B, which ended more than 100 years of free trash pickup services for single-family homes. The plaintiffs alleged the fees violate Proposition 218, a state ballot measure that holds utility fees cannot exceed the costs of providing those services.
Former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre, one of the attorneys representing the homeowners, said that while voters approved a monthly fee of between $23 and $29, the City Council approved imposing a nearly $44 monthly fee.
"This is draining money from people's homes and if they are not able to pay, they are terrified that they will be foreclosed on," Aguirre told Superior Court Judge Euketa Oliver earlier this month. According to the Union- Tribune, the trial over the trash fees was recessed on Wednesday and will likely be dismissed this week.
While the fees will not be reduced to $29 per month, they will be reduced to $38.75 starting next year — a number adjusted for inflation from the initial proposal in 2021.
As part of the compromise to drop the ballot measure efforts, the plaintiffs in the suit asked for the city to concede the Balboa Park paid parking, which will roll back by the end of the year.
"As the only council member who voted against both the trash fee and Balboa Park parking fees, I am pleased that the City Council has agreed to this settlement," Councilman Raul Campillo said. "Today, we are reducing the cost of living in San Diego and beginning the process of rebuilding San Diegans' trust in their city government. Seniors who live on a fixed income and families struggling to pay their bills will see more money in their pockets, and small businesses and museums in Balboa Park will see their customers return."
A potential settlement was also considered by the council in closed session earlier this month, but was rejected.
In June 2025, the City Council passed the solid-waste fee, breaking a 106-year-old precedent of the city not charging single-family homeowners a fee for trash pickup. The Lincoln Club Business League began collection signatures this winter to get the issue in front of the voters.
"This is about honesty, accountability and affordability," said Kevin Faulconer, president and CEO of the Lincoln Club Business League and former mayor of San Diego in March. "San Diegans were misled, and the trash tax is now costing them far more than promised. The Lincoln Club Business League is leading a coalition to repeal the trash tax and stop City Hall's reckless habit of piling on new fees to cover its own fiscal mismanagement."
Then-Council President Sean Elo-Rivera and Councilman Joe LaCava proposed Measure B in 2022 to allow the city to collect a fee for solid waste collection, transport, disposal and recycling, including the cost of bins and force short-term vacation rentals, accessory dwelling units and "mini-dorms" currently receiving city trash pickup to pay for the services.
Single-family refuse pickup is funded by the city's general fund, which all residents pay into through property tax — whether they rent or own a single-family home, a condo or an apartment. The city takes away 300,000 tons of trash and 150,000 tons of recycling, compostables and yard waste annually.
"This is not a new cost, this is a cost that has been borne by those who do not receive city services," Elo-Rivera said last year.
The People's Ordinance, as the free trash pickup was nicknamed, had been criticized for years by activists for being inequitable because although every household pays property tax either directly or through rent, only single- family households received trash pickup at no additional charge. In 2009, a San Diego County grand jury concluded that the ordinance had "outlived its usefulness in a 21st century society."
In January, the city broke another precedent by charging San Diegans and visitors for parking in Balboa Park. The council partially walked that back in February by allowing city residents verified through an online portal to park for free all day at seven of the 12 lots in Balboa Park — Pepper Grove, Federal, Upper Inspiration Point, Lower Inspiration Point, Marston Point, Palisades and Bea Evenson lots.
More than 3,000 San Diegans registered to be verified for the resident free parking program by mid-April, and the city collected nearly $700,000 for operations and maintenance in Balboa Park. The zoo, which operates on an independent lease from the city, will allow members to continue to park for free.
In April, the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership announced that attendance at Balboa Park's museums was down 34% on average since paid parking went into effect, with some institutions dropping by 60%
"We've appreciated the city's recent willingness to listen and take initial steps in response to community concerns," Balboa Park Cultural Partnership Executive Director Peter Comiskey said last month. "However, the latest data make clear that those changes are not reversing the decline in visitation, and the impacts on our institutions are becoming more serious. We are urging additional action by our regional leaders before potentially irreversible damages take hold, and jobs and beloved programs or even organizations are lost."
Some of the park's larger institutions predict more than $10 million lost in revenue from the lowered attendance alone, and jobs and program losses are a real threat, Comiskey said.
