Council approves garbage bin fee

8-6 split vote adds $1.14 monthly dues to residents’ water bills

Beginning in July, Houston residents will find a new $1.14 fee on their monthly water bills for leasing the city’s garbage and recycling bins.

A divided City Council voted 8-6, with three members absent, to pass the new fee Wednesday after it was delayed twice at previous meetings. The fee will be in place for four years, and then it will have to return to council for consideration again because of a sunset amendment posed by Councilman Michael Kubosh.

Mayor Sylvester Turner has said the $5 million in new annual revenue the fee is expected to generate is needed to maintain the city’s stock of the bins, particularly in light of Houston’s budget difficulties. The dollars will be deposited in a separate account for that purpose. Turner said the city cannot afford to keep providing the bins for free.

“We have strained Solid Waste to the limit in this city,” Turner said. “The point is, we’re simply asking people to pay for the bins, just for the bins.”

Houston mayors and councils — including Turner — long have resisted the idea of monthly garbage collection fees like those imposed in every other major Texas city. As of last year, Austin charged a monthly garbage fee of between $25 and $50, San Antonio charged roughly $20, Dallas charged $27 and Fort Worth charged between $12.50 and $23.

Turner said he has resisted fees at those levels because the public would not allow them. He said he instead chose the “lowest denominator” — which he has insisted is not a garbage collection fee — amid pleas from Solid Waste Management Department Director Harry Hayes for a more robust fee to improve service.

Hayes told council Wednesday that 30-40 percent of complaints the department receives are related to missing or damaged bins.

“This is one of the lowest-hanging fruits to deal with one of the highest complaints that we get

from customers,” Hayes said.

Nonetheless, the 57cents-per-bin fee sparked a spirited debate around the council table.

District A Councilwoman Amy Peck had suggested other cuts the city could make to avoid imposing the fee on residents during a turbulent economy. After the mayor rejected those alternatives, Peck won a majority last week to delay the vote until after the mayor unveiled his budget Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Peck suggested temporarily shutting off water features at city parks, offering voluntary furlough days for city workers and cutting most nonessential travel from the city’s operating budget.

At-Large Councilman Mike Knox said he fundamentally was opposed to what he described as a “camel’s nose under the tent” governmental approach. He also said the city requires residents to have these bins, so they do not have a choice about whether to pay the fee.

“Furthermore, even though it’s a small amount of money, I think it will disproportionately affect our minority and low-income

communities, where every penny makes a difference in their budget,” Knox said.

Others expressed concern the fee amounted to a perpetual lease, as opposed to giving residents the option to purchase the bins outright. Vice Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum, who represents southwest Houston and opposed the fee, asked why it was not possible to give residents that option. She also said the fee would not improve collection services, which are constituents’ primary complaint.

“If we need a fee to pick up trash, I think we need to communicate that,” CastexTatum said. “The container fee will not improve the trash service, which is the highest number of calls going into 311.”

Turner and Hayes both said the purchase option is not offered because the system needs to be uniform to work.

“Otherwise, it’s going to lead to a multiplicity of issues when it’s leaving it up to individuals to go and do it,” Turner said. “It has to be uniformity across the board, for the system to work with the greatest degree of efficiency.”

Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin, who represents the area around Kingwood and Clear Lake, said the fee makes the city’s system fairer. His district’s garbage is collected by private companies, meaning his constituents’ taxes pay for other people’s garbage bins, he argued.

“My opinion is, if you use them, you pay for them,” Martin said.

District C Councilwoman Abbie Kamin, who represents the district around Montrose and the Heights, said her office received more input in favor of the fee than opposed. Of the 12 constituents who opposed the fee, 10 changed their minds when her office called back to explain it, she said.

“It’s addressing a critical need that we get calls on all the time,” Kamin said.

The Solid Waste Management Department says funding for maintaining and replacing bins has not been able to keep up since the city began implementing single-source recycling in 2010, effectively doubling the number of bins it has throughout the city.

The department serves about 390,000 customers with a total of about 780,000 containers. It says it has devoted about $1 million a year to replacing the containers since 2006, an amount Hayes said is “insufficient.”