“It’s hard to fight city hall,” goes the old adage, but what happens when city hall wants to fight? Residents may soon find out after the Council loudly, and proudly, refused to approve a resolution to authorize an organic recycling program.
Granted, the city would not necessarily be required to pay for it, but if passed directly to the affected businesses, they would likely be forced out of business. “What if I can pull the votes to say no (to the proposed resolution),” Council member Ellery Deaton asked Jennifer Wallin, a representative of CalRecycle attending the meeting as the debate began.
Deaton expressed extreme frustration with portions of the law that allows local governments to “impose a fee” to cover the costs, but provides for no state reimbursement. “We’ve had enough of this,” she said.
Thomas Moore said he and his family recycle everything and he “totally agrees” with the aspirations of the law, but “I still have questions.” Schelly Sustarsic said she wanted time to meet with staff to “get some answers” and council member Sandra Massa-Lavitt directed staff to get her a “copy of the actual legislation.” Mayor Mike Varipapa went along with the Council.
Other local governments in the area have echoed the council’s anger as they have struggled to comply with Assembly Bill 1826. Some local cities have reportedly already received letters of “non-compliance” with the new law from the state. As yet, Seal Beach has not.
The measure, originally signed by the Governor in 2014, mandates local governments create an organic recycling program. The bill requires food and other generated organic wastes to be handled separately and eventually recycled to the extent possible into renewable energy.
The Council unanimously expressed support for the renewable goals of the organic recycling program, but expressed extreme disatisfaction with the method by which the state expected the city, and the few businesses affected by the law, to pay the costs.
In the case of Seal Beach, the restaurants on Main Street could be devastated if forced to individually comply with the law, putting the city’s key economic driver in danger. It is likely that few restaurants or other local businesses can sustain such a massive unmitigated increase in their waste disposal costs. If the restaurants fail, so could tourism therefore Seal Beach must find a solution. For now, however, the Council is hopping mad and making it very clear.
Someone in the city will eventually have to pick up the $336,515 price tag which is the amount proposed by Republic Services to pick up, separate and compost the organics. According to a staff report, there are approximately 400 commercial customers in the city. Not all of them are covered under the new law.
Here are the council’s current choices. If the cost is passed to only those affected, mostly restaurants and landscapers, their costs go up more than 300 percent. If spread across to all commercial customers, their waste costs go up approximately 20 percent. There have been no estimates yet about what each resident will pay if the program is spread to every customer. A final option is non-compliance.
Thus, in many ways, it puts local governments in a real bind. Tourist towns like Seal Beach perhaps have more at stake than more industrialized communities. Perhaps it would had have more impact had this debate come earlier, but better now than not at all.
Wallin said CalRecycle has the power to impose fines of $10,000 per day for non-compliance. Of course, it’s a new law and although she made it clear to Deaton and the others that fines were possible, she did not suggest they were in any way imminent. In fact, by the end of the debate, the Council even refused to make a motion to vote on the resolution. “We want to send a message to the state,” said Deaton.
There are other options allowed in the law and staff is likely now studying them and huddling up with other officials to seek other options. Perhaps they can pool resources with other communities, call a regional meeting and create allies with other communities faced with distasteful options. It was a somewhat unexpected, yet defiant show of backbone that will likely be felt at many levels in a common sense protest against unfunded mandates. Ultimately, the Council realizes they likely have few avenues to success in a court of law, but they boldly took the liberty on Monday to strongly make their case in the court of public opinion.
