The city’s green residential trash cans are lined up in an alley between Market Street and Ships Mechanic Row in Galveston on Monda. The city is looking at increasing trash fees for businesses that use the green residential cans.
JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News

The Daily News
By B. SCOTT McLENDON, The Daily News
October 3, 2023

GALVESTON - Island business owners might soon see their monthly trash collection fees more than double after years of residents subsidizing the service.

Aside from overburdening residents, a slow slide by the city into collecting commercial garbage is undercutting private haulers and putting extraordinary wear and tear on public equipment, administrators said.

The city council at its Sept. 21 meeting deferred a vote on raising commercial trash fees from about $53 a month to $129 a month and ending seven-day-a-week pickup for businesses on The Strand downtown.

The council agreed to put off a final vote on the fee hike until its Oct. 26 meeting. The planned vote is part of a push by the city to balance the percentages of city services used by tourists and island residents. Galveston spends more on trash services than comparable cities, officials said.

“We determined that business unit just was not performing and it was costing the residents an inequitable portion of the solid waste system’s finances,” Dustin Bender, sanitation department director, said at the Sept. 21 meeting.

Bender hopes the commercial fee increase will prevent an increase for residential customers.

Councilman John Paul Listowski said he is worried about how the potential fee increase could affect small businesses that don’t produce much trash. Listowski asked for the item to be deferred to Oct. 26, so he could have more time to seek input from small-businesses operators.

It was too soon to tell how some small businesses felt about the increase because they were still shopping around for commercial-hauling prices, Listowski said.

“The city did not get any input from its customers on this,” Listowski said. “They came up with those numbers on what it would take to break even on their end.”

The city was looking for ways to better balance the burden of commercial services on residents, according to staff.

Listowski said he wanted to ensure businesses had enough time to research and weigh in on the matter before council makes a decision. Listowski added that he didn’t want businesses to see the price increase for the first time on a bill in the mail.

“I just wanted to hit pause, try to get the word out and see if there are going to be a whole lot of issues with this ordinance change,” Listowski said. “And if there is, then maybe we talk a bit more. If not, let’s move forward and pass it.”

DUMPING THE CANS

The city, by its charter, is responsible for picking up residential trash, City Manager Brian Maxwell said. He added that, over the past 30 years or so, the city has creeped into collecting more and more commercial trash.

The city isn’t required to provide commercial trash collection services, spokeswoman Marissa Barnett said. She added that businesses are required to have trash services, but that can be through the city or the private sector.

Most cities have a single commercial hauler contracted to handle commercial trash and maintain a level standard throughout the city, Maxwell said. However, Galveston allows businesses to choose which hauler they want to use — including the city’s service, which is offered at below market price.

“But as prices have gone up on commercial hauling, businesses have migrated to using green residential trash cans,” Maxwell said. Businesses using residential cans creates multiple problems for the city, she added.

City staff began noticing the strain commercial pickup was having on the sanitation department about a year ago when Bender came on board, Maxwell said. She added that staff began noticing the deficiencies after installing data-tracking equipment and software on the department’s trucks.

“It’s costing us a lot of money to pick up residential-style bins from businesses because it’s very heavy trash,” Maxwell said. “It’s hurting our vehicles, causing us delayed pickup times. And we’re passing that cost off to the residents.”

She added that the unauthorized use of residential trash cans is causing the city to purchase garbage trucks more frequently. The most recent of those purchases cost the city nearly twice the agreed-upon price after staff sent about $700,000 to an apparent scammer.

“The second thing is we are probably one-fifth of the cost of the equivalent commercial hauler that should be doing this work by charter,” Maxwell said. “So, we’re out here, really, unfairly competing with the commercial businesses that are supposed to be doing this.”

The reason the city has been able to get away with offering the service at such a low rate to businesses is because the residents are subsidizing the increased cost of serving them, Maxwell said. The proposal to do away with the seven-day-a-week downtown pickup and increase the fee paid by businesses would put the city’s solid waste service on par with a commercial hauler.

Maxwell explained that the goal of the proposal isn’t to penalize island businesses, but to “minimize the impact to residents.”

“If you insist on doing business with Galveston: One, we’re not competing against a private, taxpaying company,” Maxwell said.”And, two, we’re not going to have the residents subsidizing these commercial businesses.”

Solid waste costs are rising exponentially, according to Maxwell. She added that under the current pricing structure, the cost increases are being born primarily by island residents.

“We think we could have substantial savings in our sanitation department if the commercial customers began using commercial haulers,” Maxwell said. “We don’t want to hurt the businesses. In Galveston, we go to such great lengths to be business friendly that sometimes it adversely impacts our residents — but we have to make sure we maintain that balance.”

B. Scott McLendon: 409-683-5241; scott.mclendon@galvnews.com