{"id":473630,"date":"2026-09-24T00:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T00:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473630\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T00:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T00:34:11","slug":"this-is-incompetence-san-diego-council-members-rail-against-gloria-for-city-over-billing-thousands-for-trash-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473630\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018This is incompetence\u2019: San Diego council members rail against Gloria for city over-billing thousands for trash \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego City Council members are calling this week\u2019s trash overbilling scandal<\/a> unacceptable incompetence by the city and are demanding Mayor Todd Gloria give up his role overseeing day-to-day city operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis speaks to the competency of the mayor,\u201d said Councilmember Henry Foster, who said Wednesday that Gloria must turn over the duties of chief operating officer or face a ballot measure that could reduce the mayor\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis mayor has proven \u2014 has shown time and time again \u2014 that he does not have the experience, the knowledge, the skills to lead the operations of this city,\u201d Foster said. \u201cHe has failed the city \u2014 he has failed the residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera agreed Wednesday that Gloria must hire someone to fill the job of chief operating officer, which has been vacant since early last year when the mayor fired<\/a> Eric Dargan. Gloria has performed its duties ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Diego needs someone who wakes up every single day with one job, and that\u2019s making sure the city is clean, services work and residents\u2019 bills are accurate,\u201d Elo-Rivera said.<\/p>\n

He was referring to revelations first reported<\/a> Tuesday by The San Diego Union-Tribune that the city is dramatically overcharging many thousands of residents for trash service on recently arrived property tax bills, thanks to a technical glitch in data that city officials gave to the county tax collector.<\/p>\n

City officials said Tuesday they were scrambling to assess the size of the problem, notify every overcharged customer and figure out how to handle refunds before property taxes are due Nov. 1. Some customers are being charged as much as $1,000 more than they owe. Others are getting bills for triple what they actually owe.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Gloria issued a statement calling the errors \u201cunacceptable\u201d and vowing to get corrected billing amounts to the county by the end of the day.<\/p>\n

An aide to Gloria, Matt Yagyagan, said Wednesday the mayor was confident all county tax billing accounts for affected city residents would be corrected by Friday.<\/p>\n

The mayor has also launched an investigation to determine why the wrong data was sent, who is responsible and what safeguards can be put in place to ensure it never happens again.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Kent Lee \u2014 who reiterated Wednesday his longtime demand that Gloria hire a chief operating officer \u2014 said he will be disappointed if the mayor tries to pin the error on a low-level employee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe responsibility starts at the top,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Foster spoke harshly about the mayor and the scandal for nearly 15 minutes Wednesday at the beginning of the monthly meeting of the council\u2019s Budget and Government Efficiency Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis so-called mistake, this so-called error \u2014 this is unacceptable,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is incompetence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster noted that he was one of three council members who had voted last year against a new trash fee for single-family homes and small multifamily complexes, which for years had gotten no-fee trash service from the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I voted no on trash,\u201d Foster said. \u201cThis is why I voted no when it came to tying the fees to residents\u2019 property taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the error, which could affect 75,000 or more of the city\u2019s 220,000 trash customers, erodes the public\u2019s trust in the city and the mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can no longer continue to tolerate these kinds of missteps.\u201d Foster said. \u201cI am disgusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster said the mayor needs to take quick and dramatic action to change the structure of leadership at City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be change at the city of San Diego,\u201d Foster said. \u201cThat change needs to start at the top. The mayor needs to look himself in the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster expressed concerns about the city\u2019s strong-mayor form of government, which San Diego voters approved two decades ago to replace its longtime city manager government.\u00a0He said Gloria\u2019s decision to act\u00a0as chief operating officer himself has exacerbated those concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, then I will step in,\u201d Foster said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t see change, I will bring forward a ballot measure to repeal the strong-mayor form of government. The mayor needs to get this right, because this is unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elo-Rivera said Gloria\u2019s move to take over the duties of\u00a0chief operating officer was supposed to save the city money \u2014 but he said the scandal and other city mistakes would\u00a0wipe out those savings.<\/p>\n

He suggested the city may have to reimburse the county for sending corrected tax bills to property owners who received incorrect bills.<\/p>\n

He also said the city should pay any penalties for those who get property tax delinquency notices because of the billing errors.<\/p>\n

Elo-Rivera also demanded more information from Gloria\u2019s aides, including how many residents are affected by the overbilling, how refunds will work and whether the city can fix everything before property taxes are due Nov. 1.<\/p>\n

Because some property tax bills haven\u2019t yet been mailed, some errors\u00a0could be corrected before those\u00a0customers get a paper copy of their bill. But the county\u2019s online billing portal already reflects the incorrect amounts for customers who have been overcharged.<\/p>\n

City officials are urging customers to go to the city\u2019s trash billing website, wasteportal.sandiego.gov<\/a>, and check what they owe. City officials say these numbers are correct.<\/p>\n

Then customers can go to the county tax collector\u2019s website, sdttc.com<\/a>, and see whether the amounts match up. If they don\u2019t, the customer doesn\u2019t need to take any action. The city will contact them to handle refunds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego City Council members are calling this week\u2019s trash overbilling scandal unacceptable incompetence by the city and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,23,205,100,14417,14418,13,5236,5237,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-473630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-pb-monthly","tag-pb-monthly-news","tag-politics","tag-pomerado-news","tag-pomerado-news-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}