“Now we decide whether to eat or go for a walk,” says this woman. “With this increase, the needs will increase and… who will help us?”
Perhaps it’s necessary, but the timing and method aren’t.
Just yesterday, a Highland Park resident told Parriva about the lack of trash collection in her district, despite having reported this problem to the offices of D14 Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado.
“There they are, piled up on a corner, people have already taken them from the trash, and no one has picked them up for days,” said this resident, who prefers to remain anonymous.
As of today, that discomfort won’t be the only one. The L.A. City Council has approved a 54% increase in collection fees starting this November. This represents a dramatic increase that adds to the economic suffering residents are experiencing due to President Donald Trump’s economic policies and immigration raids.
Los Angeles is one of the hardest-hit cities in the country. Every dollar counts in Los Angeles families, especially Latino ones.
“Now we decide whether to eat or go for a walk,” says this woman. “With this increase, the needs will increase and… who will help us?”
The trash program had become heavily subsidized, to the tune of about $500,000 a day, which officials said was no longer viable given the city’s dire financial straits, which left them scrambling to close a nearly $1-billion budget deficit earlier this year, mentions the LA Times.
Having the cost subsidized by the city for so long contributed to that deficit, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
“It should have been corrected a long time ago,” Szabo said. “If we didn’t get this rate increase, the subsidy would have been more than $200 million this year.”
Once the new fees go into effect, probably in mid-November, residents of single-family homes or apartments with four units or less will pay $55.95 a month per unit.
And over the next four years rates would rise another 18% to $65.93, or almost $800 a year. Overall, our rates would dream by over 80% by 2030.
To justify this increase, Sanitation has indicated that the rate has not kept up with inflation. The last increase was in 2008, 17 years ago, when Mayor Villaraigosa, over a two-year period, more than tripled our rates from $11 to $36.32 in September of 2008. According to Sanitation, if our rates had kept up with the Consumer Price Index, the rate would be $61.80.
