Normal Heights resident Marty Graham read a post on Nextdoor on Friday, Sept. 18, alerting neighbors that their property bill showed the city of San Diego had misreported its trash fee to the county. Graham, a semi-retired journalist, and her data partner got to work.
The two recorded the types of trash cans up and down nearby streets in order to find what their likely annual trash bill would total. They then logged on to the County Assessor’s website and looked up the property tax bill for those properties.
In all, they recorded the tax bills of 100 homes.
They found that roughly 34% had inflated bills. The two contacted reporters and posted on social media.
On Wednesday, the city acknowledged the error, which officials said was discovered Monday, It impacts tens of thousands of residents, the city admitted, and immediately set off another crisis for Mayor Todd Gloria, with one councilmember calling for him to resign.
Now, in the face of an already unpopular trash fee, Gloria says he has ordered city staff to get to the bottom of it.
“Yesterday, I was briefed by City staff about errors affecting the Solid Waste Management Fee on some property-tax bills. San Diegans deserve accurate bills, and this error is unacceptable,” Gloria said in a statement.
“San Diegans expect their city government to be accurate and accountable,” the mayor added. When we fall short, my responsibility is to acknowledge it, correct it, and make sure it does not happen again. That is exactly what we are doing.”
The city is now trying to unwind the “glitch” that impacted up to 87,000 residents citywide is being rectified. Officials say they will notify residents directly if they were discharged and that in the meantime they can wait on payments and will not be responsible for any costs associated with late payments.
That wasn’t enough for Councilmember Henry Foster III, who, before the city’s budget committee Wednesday, said he was “disgusted and appalled” by the error, particularly because he said it would hit his constituents in District 4 hard.
He then called for Gloria to resign.
“The mayor needs to look at himself in the mirror and do what’s right by the residents,” he said. “Mayor Gloria needs to do the right thing for the residents of San Diego and step down.”
The city, he said, “continues to make significant mistakes and that speaks to the competency of the mayor.”
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, also at the budget committee, fell short of calling for the mayor to resign, but said “something needs to change drastically and quickly because the city and its residents can’t afford more mistakes like this.”
San Diegans, he said, need “someone who wakes up every single day with one job, and that’s making sure the city is clean, services work and residents’ bills are accurate. We have a job to do as council that’s make good policy and govern in a way that makes life better.”
Gloria took over the role over chief operations officer for the city in early 2025 when he dismissed the city’s top bureaucrat, who had previously held the position since 2022.
“No amount of good policy work can make up for the basics not being done well, and we can’t do that if the information we get is inaccurate, or basic operations can’t be performed at the most basic of levels,” Elo-Rivera said.
Graham is feeling the impact of that failure on her limited finances.
“(My bill) is $224 higher, and my mortgage company will make me pay it via escrow,” she wrote in a message to Times of San Diego after finding the error. “My mortgage payment went up $100 a month already because of trash fees. I’m a senior on a fixed income in this inflationary economy.”
Graham found some bills appeared a few hundred dollars over the annual fee, according to the size of their trash recepticle. Another, she said, was nearly $1,500.
Times of San Diego spoke to another resident who found a charge of $2,353 on their upcoming property tax bill, approximately $1,650 more than what it should have been.
Graham and her data buddy’s research has now resulted in a message on the County Treasurer’s website.
Elo-Rivera, before the budget committee, also credited the county with its efforts to try and contain the fallout from the city’s error.
“I did speak with the county treasurer and tax collector last night and it sounds like the county has been working hard to limit damage and I appreciate that, but this was a city operational failure as [Foster] said. And it will likely carry city costs,” he said.
Meanwhile, despite the error, the city still issued a call to encourage residents to sign up for their trash portal.
“We encourage customers who have not already done so to create an account in the Residential Waste Collection Services Portal at WastePortal.sandiego.gov. This will allow you to view your service information and receive future updates from the City about trash service,” officials said in the city statement.
Councilmember Kent Lee called on Gloria to restore the chief operating officer position, rather than filling the role himself.
“If an error of this magnitude can occur without officials noticing, the problem goes deeper than any one employee or one mistake, and we must confirm the refuse fee program is operationally sound,” Lee said.
“It’s the city council’s responsibility to help the public get to the bottom of this, and it’s the mayor’s responsibility to put his house in order so people can trust that their bills are correct,” he said.”
Graham is awaiting city action.
“The city didn’t know until we started shrieking,” she said. “First answer was ‘Huh? File a claim.’ When the claims started pouring in, somebody went and looked. Doh!”
