County kicks can down road on garbage rate hike

Miami-Dade County commissioners spent most of Tuesday morning exchanging heated views on how much residents have to pay to have their garbage picked up. Eventually the decision they made was to delay making a decision.

In fact, a good portion of the discussion consisted of commissioners trying to decide whether they had to make a decision immediately or put it off.

Assured by the county attorney that an immediate decision wasn’t required, commissioners breathed a collective sigh of relief and kicked the trash can down the road to at least September.

Discussion centered on a report by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in which she didn’t consider whether to raise garbage collection fees, but rather by how much.

A multi-day fire last year at the now-closed Covanta trash processing center in Doral that had handled the majority of the county’s solid waste “changed the calculus for everyone,” commissioners agreed, but calculus deals with “the finding and properties of derivatives and integrals of functions,” according to Google. The board’s issue had more to do with basic addition and subtraction.

The mayor’s report in June said the Department of Solid Waste Management (DSWM) “will experience a shortfall of $38.8 million at the end of fiscal 2023-24.

“As a result, DSWM finds its collections operations fund in a deficit beginning Oct. 1, 2023,” the mayor wrote.

“The current deficit requires either an increase in fees,” Mayor Levine Cava said, “or cuts to critical solid waste services.”

The notion of either charging more or offering less did not sit well with the commission. Madeleine Bastien said she had constituents in her District 2 who could not afford any increase.

“The fact is,” Ms. Bastien told her colleagues, “we are all aware of the many challenges that our residents are facing … I hear their cries. I listen to them. They are concerned about the rising cost of property taxes, increases with their insurance … putting food on the table.”

“Multiple factors have contributed to the continued increase in operating costs,” Mayor Levine Cava said in her report, “including the sustained effects of the pandemic, which caused a significant shift in waste from commercial accounts to residential accounts.

“Recycling globally shifted from being a revenue generating operation,” she said, “to a service municipalities must now pay for.”

Costs the county had previously been insulated from by a long-term recycling contract expired early this year.

The mayor’s staff worked through several projections to find the lowest possible increase in collection fees, she said.

“Although $116 per household is needed to close the gap, in order to minimize the impacts to
our residents, my administration instead recommends an increased annual amount of $36, or $3 per month.”

Currently the county charges each household $509 a year for waste collection. This hike would produce an additional $12 million, the mayor said.
Commissioners were told they weren’t required to make a final decision until Sept. 6 and agreed to defer deciding until then.