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Some Heap Scorn on Trash Rates : Ventura: A program to reduce waste and promote recycling means some customers’ bills have increased more than 50%. The city defends the higher charges.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

When Ventura’s trash haulers went around the city earlier this year replacing their old, 55-gallon garbage cans with new, 64-gallon and 101-gallon plastic bins, many residents didn’t seem to notice.

But this week, when residents received the first advance bills under the city’s newly adopted refuse rate structure, some residents were shocked.

In some cases, residents learned, their bimonthly bills had gone up more than 50%, from $32 to $50. Others found out they would have to pay an extra $5 a week for services they had previously received for free.

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The program, aimed at reducing waste and promoting recycling, charges customers a rate based on the amount of garbage they put out, instead of charging everybody the same amount for weekly collection, as the city hauler has done until now.

But many residents have a problem with this system, which goes into effect on Saturday.

Carmen Gonzales, for example, doesn’t know if she will be able to afford refuse collection under the new system.

Gonzales’ sole support is Social Security, and she lives in a modest, two-bedroom house on Barnett street off Ventura Avenue along with her son, daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren and her 96-year-old mother.

Her relatives moved in after her son-in-law was laid off from work, and Gonzales is letting them stay rent-free until they can save enough to move out, she said.

On Monday, her 64-gallon barrel was already full, and the trash collector comes by on Friday. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I already try not to buy canned goods or anything that has too much wrapping, I’m trying to save as much as I can.”

Gonzales said paying the extra $5 a week it would cost her to put out more trash was out of the question. “I don’t know why they’re doing it,” she said of the new rate structure. “With the income I have, $5 is a lot of money.

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Fortunately for Gonzales, two neighbors who are senior citizens and live alone have offered to free up some space in their bins for Gonzales’ extra trash. “I hope they’re still willing to do that, or else I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Gonzales said.

Schoolteacher Maynard Chapman’s trash problem, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of the one Gonzales faces.

He lives alone on nearby West Ramona Street and barely fills half of his 64-gallon bin. Why, he asks, should he be paying $16.50 for half a barrel, when large trash producers with three barrels pay just over $10 a barrel?

“This is unequal taxation,” he said. “I do my own composting of my garden waste, I recycle everything I can, and I get charged more than the seven people living next door!”

In the relatively affluent Exeter Street neighborhood, residents face a different sort of problem. Their 55-gallon bins were replaced by 101-gallon bins last month, and now they are being charged $25 a month for their basic trash collection service, instead of $16.

“They told us the new bins were supposed to be free, and that they changed them for environmental reasons,” said Maxine Coburn, 56, one of the street residents. She said she has been trying to call the trash hauler, E.J. Harrison & Sons, since she got the bill last week, “but the phone is always busy.”

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Coburn said some of her neighbors have devised a way to beat the system. “They are talking about taking their trash at night to the big bins in the restaurants and public schools.”

Under the new program, the haulers will continue to charge $16.50 a month for residents that put out a 64-gallon barrel of trash or less. But every bag of trash beyond that will cost residents an extra $5. Customers with heavy trash loads have the option of requesting 101-gallon barrels for $25.14 a month, or three 64-gallon barrels for $31.79 a month.

Residents will not be charged--nor paid--for their recyclable waste, but city officials hope that the price structure will encourage them to recycle in order to reduce their non-recyclable trash load.

City officials said the program is needed to reduce waste as the city’s Baliard landfill nears capacity and Ventura, along with other California cities, faces a state mandate to reduce waste disposal by 25% in 1995 and 50% in the year 2000.

And city Recycling Coordinator Eric Wobalowski said he has an answer to each one of the residents’ problems.

For people like Chapman, the city is designing a new price category to reward ultra-low waste disposers. This category should be in place by the beginning of the new fiscal year next June, Wobalowski said.

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For residents who share Coburn’s views, Wobalowski said “there was nothing underhanded in what the city did when we gave them the more expensive bins.”

He said the city had noticed that in that neighborhood, in addition to the trash bin provided by the hauler, people were putting out two or three plastic bins on their curbside for weekly collection.

“We gave them the bigger bins for their convenience,” Wobalowski said. “If they want the smaller bins, all they have to do is call before Sept. 1 to have them changed at no cost.” And for Gonzales, Wobalowski has a brochure explaining how to reduce waste in ways she probably never imagined. “In Seattle, total tonnage is one-third what it used to be before they started their program,” he said.

“It’s always difficult to change habits and conceptions,” Wobalowski said. “I understand some people may not be happy, but this volume-based rate is necessary to protect the environment.”

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