One of the city’s solid waste vehicles collects trash on Merrill St in the Heights on February 19, 2026.
Jill Karnicki/Staff photographer
City of Houston leaders are finally laying out concrete plans for reforming the city’s long-struggling waste services months after adopting a new $5 monthly trash fee, with a goal of reaching 99% on-time pickups by next summer.
Public Works director Randy Macchi on Wednesday presented the first detailed service metrics since the city implemented the fee earlier this year to stabilize trash, recycling and yard waste services. Mayor John Whitmire pitched the fee as a way to close a budget deficit and to help the long-strained solid waste department, but the city had said little about how services would improve until now.
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Macchi told council members that his department is aiming to bring missed trash pickups, long a top complaint for city residents, to less than 10 incidents per 10,000 pickups by the end of next year. City 311 records indicate Houston currently is missing 17 of every 10,000 pickups, down from more than 23 per 10,000 around this time last year, he said.
The city also has reoriented waste services around new metrics that better reflect customer satisfaction, such completed 311 calls, rather than raw measures like pounds of waste collected, Macchi said. Reforms will take at least the next year to implement, he said.
“We have implemented solid waste into the Public Works way of doing work, and there’s been some measurable improvements,” Macchi said.
The new fee was only part of Whitmire’s budget restructuring this summer. The plan also moved the solid waste department’s $134 million budget out of the general fund, fed mainly by taxes, and to the city utility system within Public Works. The department is now funded mostly with water bill revenue, with only a fraction covered by the new trash fee, which critics worry could hurt the utility system’s long-term financial health.
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City finance officials anticipate raising the fee to $25 per month over several years, though Whitmire has not publicly committed to any increase.
A Chronicle analysis of 311 solid waste requests in Houston and other large Texas cities found in May that the city had far more trouble answering complaints than its peers, with an average response time of more than eight days.
Heavy trash pickup for junk and yard waste remains among the department’s most persistent issues, with just 41% of routes completed on time in August, Macchi said Wednesday.
Several council members said they continue to field complaints from constituents confused by the every-other-month schedule. Macchi said two new contractors have been brought on to augment existing services.
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Macchi also detailed new plans for spending $3 million the council dedicated to curbing the city’s illegal dumping problem, which long has plagued working class neighborhoods with discarded furniture, tires and trash bags.
About two-thirds of that money will go towards new vehicles and tools for cleanup crews, Macchi said, with the remainder going to cameras and public education campaigns.
Macchi also said his department is working on loosening requirements for residents to show identification, utility bills and other documents to use free city trash and recycling drop-off sites, which he said could help reduce dumping.
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