{"id":475969,"date":"2026-09-26T02:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475969\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T02:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:00:14","slug":"gloria-and-ferbert-fail-san-diego-on-trash-and-measure-a-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475969\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloria and Ferbert fail San Diego on trash and Measure A \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s bombshell U-T reports about 87,000<\/a> San Diego households being overbilled<\/a>, some massively, for annual trash service being collected via county property taxes for the first time on behalf of the city understandably triggered public fury. But after nearly two years of civic stupidity \u2014 most egregiously in the June decision to close 13 public bathrooms in a city park visited by 15 million people<\/a> a year \u2014 what it did not trigger was surprise. Competence is not a strong suit at City Hall, and it\u2019s fair to say Mayor Todd Gloria deserves the most blame.<\/p>\n

In June, when Gloria took over as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors at a gathering in Long Beach, he expounded<\/a> on his \u201cMayors Deliver\u201d agenda. Here\u2019s what he\u2019s delivered in his hometown: an elaborate bait-and-switch<\/a> on the size of the new trash fees that were imposed on 220,000-plus single-family homeowners in a June 2025 City Council vote; dishonest claims that fees were higher than projected because of requests by residents<\/a> at \u201chundreds of community meetings\u201d for expanded city service; and a refusal to acknowledge that San Diego voters made clear<\/a> their support for outsourcing services like trash collection in 2006.<\/p>\n

For a long time, the mayor seemed to think this was all going well. In August 2025, in a report<\/a> published by Bloomberg Cities Network (affiliated with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University) that appeared to be based entirely on interviews with Gloria\u2019s staff, the city\u2019s trash program was depicted as a thoughtful model for the nation. Incredibly, it said the Gloria administration was \u201coffering lessons to local leaders everywhere about not just enduring budget stress, but making the most of it.\u201d Drawing specific praise: the city\u2019s decision to \u201cseamlessly\u201d include trash fees on residents\u2019 property tax bills. Feel free to laugh, wince or scream. San Diego is a civic horror show<\/a>, not a model for the nation.<\/p>\n

And as City Attorney Heather Ferbert reminded us this week, the blame goes beyond Gloria. In June, city voters rejected Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera\u2019s Measure A, a tax on \u201csecond homes\u201d that are unoccupied most of the year. The City Council voted to put the measure on the ballot despite warnings<\/a> from member Raul Campillo that a very similar San Francisco law was blocked in 2024 by a state judge who agreed with property owners that it violated state law and the U.S. Constitution. Unsurprisingly, on Sept. 11, a state appeals court ruling threw out the San Francisco law.<\/p>\n

Ferbert could have headed off the debacle that would have resulted if Measure A passed by publicly warning city elected leaders that they risked making a costly mistake \u2014 as predecessors Mara Elliott, Jan Goldberg and Mike Aguirre had often done<\/a> on other<\/a> big issues<\/a>. But in her response<\/a> to criticism<\/a> she faced over her dereliction of duty, Ferbert not only defended keeping her advice to council members confidential, she said her handling of Measure A had the effect of \u201cprotecting the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, feel free to laugh, wince or scream. The only thing \u201cseamless\u201d about City Hall is the way one example of awful governance flows into the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week\u2019s bombshell U-T reports about 87,000 San Diego households being overbilled, some massively, for annual trash service…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1965,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-475969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-editorials","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475969","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=475969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}