COSTA MESA : Trash Fee Policy Irritates Taxpayers

For eight years, landlord Gary Johnson has paid the Costa Mesa Sanitary District for collecting trash at his rental units in Costa Mesa. But the district doesn’t pick up his trash.

Johnson, who owns four apartments, contracts with a private trash collector and doesn’t need the city’s services. But because he didn’t apply for an exemption from the charges, he has paid more than $1,200 to the district in addition to what he paid the private contractor.

Like many other condominium and apartment owners, Johnson learned of the exemption from a notice that accompanied an application for renewing a city business license.

The sanitary district learned that many people were not aware of the exemption last year when trash rates increased by 57%, prompting many calls from customers who only then noticed the charge. (A normal increase is between 5% and 10%, said Robert Brock, district manager.)

Since then, the district has increased efforts to make more property owners aware of the exemption, such as through the business license renewal notices. The district has increased the number of exemptions from 600 last year to nearly 800 this year, Brock said, and has seen a dramatic increase in requests for refunds at each monthly meeting.

Johnson plans to apply for the exemption on his property in the future, but he was turned down for a refund of the money he paid over the years.

“The board routinely denies them (refunds) because they will be able to apply for and be exempt next year,” Brock said. He defends the district’s policy and contends that it’s up to property owners to make sure they’re not being assessed unfairly.

“We don’t know they’re not getting it (the service) until they tell us and that’s the point we continually try to make to the people asking for a refund,” he said.

But some say the county tax bill, which lists “trash disposal assessment,” is too vague because it doesn’t name the sanitary district or specify that the charges are for residential collection.

Jo Ann Reinholt thought “trash disposal assessment” was for keeping up the county dump.

She and her husband were assessed $3,036 by the sanitary district for 25 of 35 condominiums they bought last August. Because the expiration date for filing for an exemption is June 30, the Reinholts missed the chance to apply for the coming year.

“That’s the part that irritates me,” Jo Ann Reinholt said. “Even if we had thought about it at that time, we would not have had the right to change it.”

“We have an inequitable system here and we feel we’re just the tip of the iceberg,” Johnson said.