Jacksonville City Council member Matt Carlucci says he plans to propose a phased-in approach to his legislation to raise the service fee charged to Jacksonville residents for trash removal.
Carlucci, whose goal is to address a growing subsidy the city is paying for curbside service, held a Jan. 30 informational meeting in which he offered two stepped approaches to raising the fee to cover the actual cost of trash hauling.
The current monthly fee of $12.65 has been in place since 2010, while the actual cost of the service has increased to $30.40 over the past 15 years, according to Council auditors.
Under the first of Carlucci’s phased-in options, the fee would rise to $20 in 2025 and $31 in 2026. The other option would raise the fee to $20 in 2025, $25 in 2026 and $31.25 in 2027.
Carlucci said he developed the options after meetings that included other Council members, discussions with Citizen Planning Advisory Committees and meetings with business groups.
The proposed fee increase is designed to address a growing budget obligation for the city, which has been subsidizing the cost of service by taking out a “loan” from the city general fund. That fund is supported by tax dollars.
Due to the city’s interlocal agreements with the Beaches communities and Baldwin, which have their own contracts with trash service providers, the city cannot legally use the general fund money for trash pickup in Jacksonville. Doing so would essentially leave the Beaches towns and Baldwin paying for both their own pickup and service for Jacksonville residents.
With the legal restriction in place, the city therefore must eventually pay back the money it is drawing from the general fund.
As the gap between the fee collections and the cost of service has grown, the city’s annual payment rose from about $3 million in 2017 to about $36 million in 2024. The “loan” is on track to surpass $500 million by 2031, according to Council auditors.
Carlucci said the stepped approach was aimed at gaining support on the Council to pay down the loan. Other attempts at raising the fee, including one by Carlucci, have been rejected, with Carlucci saying Council members were reluctant to face political backlash from increasing costs for residents.
Carlucci said that in his meetings with CPACs and other organization, he had received no pushback on the increase.
“When you pose it in such a way that we have a bill to pay and we’re not paying it, I think people grasp onto that truth and realize we need to pay our bills,” he said.
Council member Will Lahnen said at the Jan. 30 meeting he will support one of the phased-in options and that the measure is needed to help head off a looming budget crisis.
Between recent commitments such as pay raises for first responders and $167 million of incentives for development projects Downtown and across Duval County, Lahnen said the city can’t afford to let the “loan” keep growing. In addition, Mayor Donna Deegan and other city leaders say the city jail must be replaced, which would be another big-ticket expenditure.
Detractors of Carlucci’s legislation say the city should absorb the full cost of trash removal.
Lahnen said that in doing so, the city would give up the $43 million in revenue the fee currently generates. He said that although the city could eventually rein in its expenses and make budget cuts to accommodate for the loss in revenue, “with our committed liabilities … it would be a struggle in the near term.”
In addition, Lahnen said, foregoing the $43 million in revenue wouldn’t address the growing “loan” from the general fund.
“Somebody’s going to have to pay it at some point,” he said.
Carlucci’s legislation comes in two parts. Ordinance 2025-0001 calls for the fee increase, while Ordinance 2025-0002 establishes an exemption program for low-income residents modeled after one the city has established for stormwater fees. The program would apply to residents whose gross household income is at or below 150% of the federal poverty level.
Lahnen raised concerns about the exemption. Although only 362 households applied for the stormwater fee exemption in 2023, Lahnen said potentially thousands of residents could seek the trash fee exemption. The reason is that the stormwater fee, at $60 a year for smaller homes, is a fraction of the trash fee.
Lahnen also raised the possibility that wealthy households could seek the exemption. Families that receive a large share of their wealth from such means as investments and capital gains can keep much of it off of their annual tax returns, and thus report a low income.
According to information supplied by Carlucci’s office, Jacksonville’s monthly fee is well below that of other Florida cities. Among them, fees are $22.55 in Orlando, $38.23 in Tampa, $28.68 in Daytona Beach, $25.64 in Tallahassee and $32.45 in Sarasota, to name a few.