Should Chicago raise its garbage collection fees? City Council debates fee hike to help balance budget

Of all the new revenue sources being studied to minimize or eliminate the need to raise property taxes, none has divided the City Council like raising garbage collection fees.

Chicago’s garbage collection fee has been frozen at $9.50-a-month since being imposed in 2016. It raises $68.8 million, covering just 40% of the city’s $167.2 million in annual refuse collection costs.

But Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), chair of the Budget Committee and the Council's Black Caucus, is dead-set against raising the fee, branding it a “regressive tax on some of our poorest citizens.”

Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard, a longtime City Hall veteran, knows better than to get caught in that politically charged debate.

But testifying Wednesday at City Council budget hearings, Stallard armed proponents of raising the garbage fee with the political ammunition they need. And he did it simply by talking about what a comparative bargain the Chicago fee is.

"You can go and look at other cities across the country and it’s $30-plus for a cart, $35 for a cart,” Stallard told the Budget Committee.

“The carts are delivered for no cost to the constituent. We know that there’s two, three, four carts out at each location.”

The price comparison was enough to convince Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) it’s time. The only question is how much to raise it.

“Not to belabor the point, but we really need to look at that. We need to try to identify ways that we can incentivize this. Obviously looking at not hurting seniors,” O’Shea said.

Without raising the politically volatile idea of switching to a volume-based fee, O’Shea wondered, "could we incentive with more blue [recycling] carts replacing black [garbage] carts? I don’t know.”

O’Shea noted the city’s switch from ward-by-ward refuse collection to a grid-based system was equally controversial years ago.

“Many people opposed it and we’ve saved tens of millions of dollars and become so much more efficient,” he said.

“We should work with Chris [Suave, recycling chief] and your team and try to identify what we can do to … capture necessary revenue," O'Shea told Stallard, "but also reward those [who recycle most] and give a break to those who it would be most harmful to.”

The city’s budget office evaluated four options for raising the monthly garbage collection fee — which isn't based on volume — from the current $9.50:

• A $12 fee would generate an additional $17.2 million.

• A $20 fee would raise $68.5 million more.

• A $34 fee would generate $159.9 million more each year.

• And a $52 fee would bring in an additional $277.4 million a year.

A chart of surrounding cities was included in the Budget Office analysis. The closest fee to Chicago’s $9.50 monthly fee was Evanston at $11.10 for a 65-gallon cart and $25.07 for a 95-gallon cart. The highest surrounding suburb was Oak Park, at $26.39 for a 64-gallon cart and $29.06 for a 96-gallon container.

As for Chicago’s recycling rates, Stallard argued the rates are not nearly as dismal as they might appear.

“The reason our number sits at the 9 or 10% is because that’s just what’s coming out of the blue cart. But we collect 80,000 tons of recycled material that we divert. We pick up 800,000 tons of raw garbage. That’s why our number is so skewed,” Stallard said.

“Since the blue cart’s inception, we’re gonna crack one million tons of recycled material this year. … If you put that in perspective, that’s a million elephants that we diverted from going to the dump.”

Although people love to compare Chicago’s recycling numbers to Seattle’s, Stallard said it’s not a fair comparison. In fact, he argued Chicago recycles “more than Seattle and more than Denver.”

“What other cities do to get their numbers up is they use other things. … There’s people that use numbers from” facilities like the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, he said.

If Chicago did the same, "we’d be at 20%," Stallard said. And "if I added what ... CDOT does with concrete and asphalt because that's not going to the dump, we'd be at 30%. ... If we added everything that the city does, we could get those numbers, too."

Having said that, Stallard acknowledged the biggest room for improvement lies in monitoring recycling at high-density buildings five units and above.