The Trashman Cometh : Santa Paula: Citywide curbside collection is proposed to help meet state waste-reduction requirements. Officials brace for rural residents’ complaints over $18 monthly fees.

Paul Hylton of Santa Paula recycled his discarded aluminum cans, plastic bottles and newspapers for decades before the practice was considered environmentally correct.

It also made good sense to the 86-year-old Hylton--a former oil field mechanic--to turn household garbage and yard waste into compost for use as an organic fertilizer in his two-acre orange grove.

Once and sometimes twice a year, Hylton hauls a load of trash that can’t be recycled to the Toland Road Landfill outside Santa Paula, where he dumps it for $17 a load.

“I’m saving the city a little money and helping myself at the same time,” Hylton reasoned during an interview at his house off Ojai Avenue. “It’s cheaper than paying the city $18 a month.”

But the day is nearing when Santa Paula residents such as Hylton may no longer be allowed to dispose of their own trash, as the City Council wrestles with making weekly trash service mandatory for the first time.

Under a proposed new trash ordinance, scheduled to be considered for the second time as soon as April 19, Santa Paula residents would also be required to participate in a curbside recycling program for the first time.

City officials say mandatory trash collection and recycling are essential if Santa Paula is to meet a state-imposed deadline to divert a quarter of its solid waste from landfills by 1995 and half by 2000. Jurisdictions that fail to meet the goal will be subject to fines as high as $10,000 a day.

Satisfying the state’s solid waste law will mean sweeping changes in how trash is collected in rural areas such as Santa Paula.

“We are undergoing a massive effort to change lifestyles,” explained Norm Wilkinson, Santa Paula’s public works director.

“Refuse collection is no longer just a service, but an environmental tool that is being used for a lot of purposes. It will no longer be a service people can take or not depending on how they feel.”

If the council approves the refuse ordinance as expected, Santa Paula will become the sixth of the county’s 10 cities to adopt mandatory trash collection. Two more cities plan to follow suit shortly.

“It’s like basic phone service: You pay the base rate whether you use the phone or not,” said John Zaragosa, who is in charge of Oxnard’s city-run rubbish service, which is compulsory. “Without mandatory service, people would let trash pile up in their back yards.”

Thousand Oaks and Fillmore officials say efforts are under way in those cities to implement compulsory trash service within a year. After that, only residents of Ojai, Ventura and unincorporated parts of the county would still have a say in how their household waste is disposed of.

“There may be some exceptions, but to benefit the whole community, everybody should share in the cost,” Thousand Oaks recycling coordinator Graham Watts said, explaining why the City Council favors mandatory service.

Only in the cities of Ojai and Ventura do officials see compulsory refuse service as unnecessary to meet the 1995 goal.

“I think the 50% goal is where we’re really going to have to look at options” such as compulsory service, said Marilyn Miller, an Ojai assistant planner.

But Miller added that illegal dumping has increased in Ojai’s outlying areas, something that may force the city to reopen a litter station at California 150 and Burnham Road.

Steve Chase, Ventura’s environmental director, said compulsory service is not needed in an affluent urban setting such as Ventura, since almost all residents already use the available trash service.

“You don’t get that level of compliance from folks in a rural setting or who are on the edge of a rural area like Santa Paula,” Chase said.

Indeed, non-participation in Santa Paula’s curbside trash service is the key reason the new ordinance is necessary, Santa Paula officials say. More than 1,000 of the city’s 6,000 households do not subscribe to the city’s service, which charges residents $18 a month for weekly pickup regardless of how much trash is left at the curb.

Although many of the non-subscribers live in condominium complexes where trash is picked up by a private hauler, Wilkinson said an undetermined number of residents are simply looking to avoid paying the monthly fee.

While some of the non-payers dispose of their trash responsibly as Hylton does, others simply dump their trash in a neighbor’s can or add to the growing problem of illegal dumping, he said.

“When you have a community like Santa Paula, with so many people who are unemployed, there is a tremendous temptation to dump that old couch illegally in the countryside,” Wilkinson said.

Forcing residents to pay for a service they could previously reject is also a sensitive matter because trash service requires a city employee to regularly visit someone’s property, Wilkinson said.

“Refuse collection is as close as we get to the public,” Wilkinson said. “It’s an intimate function and the only public service where somebody comes to your property, or the edge of your property, every week.”

At the first council hearing on Santa Paula’s proposed trash ordinance in February, several residents expressed concern about the cost of the city’s service, which Wilkinson called “a Cadillac service with Cadillac prices.” At $18 a month, Santa Paula residents pay a higher rate than residents of Oxnard or Port Hueneme--the only other cities in Ventura County that provide rubbish service directly.

Councilmen Alfonso Urias and Wayne Johnson, who represent Santa Paula on the Ventura County Waste Commission and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District respectively, have met with Wilkinson since the first hearing to fine-tune the ordinance. A revised ordinance is expected to be ready by the next council meeting.

One of the thorniest unresolved issues is whether to continue the city’s policy that allows residents to discard an unlimited amount of trash at the curb without an additional charge. As it is, half of the city’s four-person rubbish crew does nothing but pick up the overflow trash that does not fit in the standard 100-gallon containers.

Wilkinson said the threat of illegal dumping may compel the city to remain tolerant of overflowing trash. In a compromise, the revised ordinance may allow residents to discard extra trash one day a month or allow the continued disposal of objects such as couches and refrigerators, he said.

Urias said the city may create exemptions for people like Hylton who can prove they have properly disposed of their trash, but he said the real risk is in making the ordinance too tough.

“We have to be careful we don’t make our ordinance so strict that people will dump their trash out on a country lane,” Urias said.

After listening to a description of the city’s new ordinance at the first hearing, Hylton told the council he had just one expectation.

“I don’t expect to be treated special,” Hylton said. “I just expect to be treated fair.”