MISSION VIEJO : Residents to Pay Trash Haulers More

Ending a bitter, 19-month-old dispute, City Council members have agreed to a municipal trash contract that includes a rate hike for residents in January but which officials claim will save residents $1.2 million over five years.

The savings will come through the postponement of rate hikes that would have normally been imposed on city households by Dewey’s Rubbish Disposal, an Irvine-based waste hauler.

The company will receive its first increase under the contract in January, when the rates will rise to $12.65 per month from $11.85.

“There comes a point where you say, ‘We’ve gone as far as we can go,’ ” Mayor Sharon Cody said before the meeting. “We’ve come to that point.”

The city had accused the trash company of grossly overestimating the amount of city garbage hauled to county landfills. Dewey’s officials denied the city’s charges.

In a pattern that repeated over 19 months, the two sides held a series of meetings, declared an impasse and broke negotiations for several months.

The city denied Dewey’s at least one rate increase allowed under the contract and in one case called for competing trash companies to submit bids for the municipal contract.

City officials were on the brink of taking the dispute to court in April when the city notified Dewey’s that it was taking steps to unilaterally cancel the contract.

By then, the city had spent about $200,000 to hire lawyers and accountants to challenge the trash firm, which is owned by Waste Management Inc., the county’s largest waste hauler. One city administrator had been assigned almost exclusively to coordinate the efforts against Dewey’s.

Negotiators then returned to the bargaining table and successfully hammered out an agreement.

“We needed to wind this up,” Cody said. “I absolutely feel like we’re doing the right thing.”