JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville city council overturned Mayor Donna Deegan’s veto over how much the city pays for trash pickup at a Tuesday night meeting.
Deegan and the city council have been at odds over how much the city pays for trash pickup.
Deegan announced Monday that she had vetoed a bill passed by the city council that would have given trash hauler Meridian Waste a 29% financial increase. The veto is the first one for her administration.
Ordinance #2024-800, dubbed the “Cash for Trash” bill, allowed the waste management company to receive an additional $4 million per year over the next three years on top of increases built into the existing contract.
But on Tuesday, the city council voted 14-4 in favor of overturning the veto.
Chief of Staff Mike Weinstein said the council’s decision was no surprise. Weinstein said the mayor does not have plans to change her stance.
“Basically we’re going to sit with the regular contract,” Weinstein said. “Regardless of what action the council takes on this bill, if it needs to go to legal action then that’s what we will have to do.”
The mayor’s office plans to let the original contract play out with no increase beyond what was originally agreed.
Deegan said that hefty increase would not have included additional services for taxpayers.
“In vetoing this bill, I am holding true to my commitment to be fiscally responsible and always seek a return on investment for our citizens,” Deegan said.
General counsel expects Meridian to sue to have the contract enforced.
The argument from the mayor’s office right now is that the city council can allocate funds but its her role and the executive branch’s role to decide how to spend those funds.
Increases at odds
The mayor noted the city has no issues with Meridian’s operations and described the services provided as a “fantastic job.”
“We don’t have any problem with that,” Deegan said. “We’re prepared to honor the contract.”
According to Deegan, in honoring that contract, the city initially agreed to a 5% increase with Meridian Waste because of rising costs.
Deegan said that increase was in line with the escalator in the contract Meridian has with the city.
But instead, the city council passed the higher 29% increase bill, which according to the city was against the advice of council auditors and despite the opposition of Deegan’s administration.
The mayor’s office emphasized that taxpayers won’t see additional services for the additional $4 a month increase the city council wants.
“Not only does this pay for expenses, it pays for things like lobbyist fees and cookouts and other expenses that have absolutely nothing to do with the operation of our trash hauling,” Deegan said.
The city said in addition to lobbyist fees and employee appreciation cookouts, the money would have paid for “gift cards, local sponsorships and donations.”
“I think it’s a bad message to send to the taxpayers to say we can’t afford to spend adequately on affordable housing and homelessness,” she said. “But we can take $4 million out of our precious reserves that we were told should not be touched to award more money to a trash hauler than they were awarded in their contract -- a contract they agreed to.”
View the mayor’s full response about the veto below:
City Councilman Rory Diamond provided a comment to News4JAX on the mayor’s decision, saying:
This mayor wants to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on the homeless, DEI, and stadiums, but refuses to make sure our trash is being picked up. This is breathtaking incompetence.
Councilman Rory Diamond
Mike Weinstein, Deegan’s chief of staff, shared a different opinion from Diamond.
“I think she’s done the right thing,” Weinstein said.
How the money is spent
Deegan and the council are clearly clashing over how to spend the city’s funds.
Deegan said that during the budget process, she proposed two programs that would have brought the city closer to solving the double-sided crisis of affordable housing and homelessness.
The mayor’s office said the City Council Finance Committee cut $10 million for homeless outreach in her budget proposal down to $1 million.
Another investment the administration recommended was $10 million in seed money for an affordable housing fund that would have generated a $30 million matching commitment from the private sector.
The mayor’s office said the Finance Committee stripped that funding out of the budget entirely, saying those dollars would have come from the city’s abundant operating reserves.
“Less than three months later, the Council is recommending spending those same reserve dollars to subsidize the profit margin of a well-connected private company,” the mayor’s office said in a news release.
Other bills addressing trash
Meanwhile, City Councilman Matt Carlucci is introducing two bills related to garbage fees on Tuesday that he says would address a growing financial deficit in Jacksonville’s trash collection services.
Right now, Duval County homeowners pay $12.65 a month for solid waste pickup. A number that hasn’t changed since 2010.
For perspective, residents of Orlando pay $22.55 a month, homeowners in Tallahassee pay $25.64 a month, residents of Tampa pay $38.23 a month and homeowners in Palm Coast pay $33.30.
During the pandemic, Jacksonville faced significant challenges with waste collection, including worker shortages. As a result, wages went up for trash haulers in Jacksonville, with the city raising pay for some workers by nearly 45%, and Waste Management raising pay by 33%.
Despite those increased operating costs, the cost of trash hauling for homeowners did not change.
To cover the gap, the city of Jacksonville essentially loans itself the money to cover the difference. The city has borrowed tens of millions of dollars from its general fund so far.
According to the Council Auditor’s Office, the debt associated with garbage collection has grown significantly, with the city expected to borrow nearly $36 million this fiscal year. CAO projections indicate the total debt will rise to approximately $95 million by late September 2025.
“If we do nothing, projections show that by the end of 2030, it’ll be half a billion dollars. That’s how fast this loan is compounding,” Carlucci said.
Weinstein said that while the bill Deegan vetoed deals with the city’s contract with Meridian and not with the city’s garbage collection debt, the council’s bill could make that deficit even worse.
“The bill that the council is thinking of overriding our veto on will make the gap even $12 million bigger, $4 million a year than it already is between how much we collect as fees and how much the cost of garbage collection really is,” Weinstein said.
According to Weinstein, the current fee charged to homeowners only covers about a third of the cost of trash collection.
Carlucci says the solution for the city’s deficit is gradually raising the cost of service for homeowners to help pay off that debt.
One of his proposals would raise the city’s garbage fee from $12.65 a month to $30.40 a month, and a second bill would give low-income families a chance to apply for an exemption from the fee.
Carlucci’s bills, which again are not related to the city’s contract with Meridian but rather to the city’s garbage collection debt, will be introduced to the council Tuesday. It will then take some time for them to go through several committees before the full council votes on them.