L.A. Trash Fee, Major Overhaul of Facilities Urged

The city should impose a garbage collection fee on residents, tax drivers who use commercial parking lots and spend $1.2 billion to fix decaying streets, a task force of Los Angeles business leaders urged Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday.

The group, created in June to advise the mayor on the city’s financial affairs, also called for creating a new city department to oversee environmental affairs, computerizing most traffic signals and quicker revision of the community plans that city officials use to judge the suitability of new developments.

“You have a consensus opinion here,” Bradley was told by Robert M. McIntyre, chairman and chief executive officer of Southern California Gas Co., who presented the report.

Overall, the business leaders concluded, the city is in no danger of a financial crisis. The city takes in and spends about $2.9 billion a year, and the 31,000-person payroll is almost an all-time high.

But the report given to Bradley Thursday said the city should spend $100 million more a year to address recurring problems and devote $5 billion to a major overhaul of sewers, streets and other aging city facilities.

Bradley declined to endorse any specific recommendations, most pointedly the garbage collection fee, which would likely generate the most reaction.

Three earlier mayoral task forces have suggested the garbage fee as a relatively easy way to increase city revenue, but the idea has never enjoyed much political support.

Homeowners in Los Angeles currently have their garbage picked up by Bureau of Sanitation trucks. It is considered a basic city service and funded through the regular city budget, just like police and street sweeping. In recent years, residents have also paid a surcharge on their water and electric bills to purchase new garbage trucks. Apartment owners arrange for trash pickup and disposal privately.

But the business leaders said Los Angeles is one of the few cities where residents do not pay a separate fee for rubbish collection. A $1 monthly fee would bring in $7.6 million a year.

The report also recommends that a fee be collected from customers of commercial parking lots in the city. San Francisco already imposes a 20% fee on paid parking, but even a 10% surcharge in Los Angeles would collect about $25 million a year, the report said.

Both the rubbish and parking fees would help provide money for a drastic improvement of the city’s streets, which are $1.2 billion behind in scheduled upkeep and repairs, the report said.

In general, the report concludes that over the next five years, growth and inflation will require $175 million a year in new city spending just to maintain the same level of services provided today.

However, city income should rise about the same amount without raising taxes or imposing new fees, the report concluded.

But city officials need another $100 million a year to cope with new costs: adding police officers, fixing streets, transporting refuse out of the city instead of burying it in urban canyons and improving environmental protections.

The report said it will be necessary for Bradley and other city officials to find ways to circumvent the limit on city spending imposed by the so-called Gann Amendment.

One way would be to apply political pressure to revise the law itself. Bradley declined to say Thursday whether he would support revising the Gann law, which won statewide approval from voters.

Another way is through new fees, such as the rubbish collection and parking charges, that would be exempt from the Gann Amendment limits.