This edition does not have a story on the release of Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sander’s recommended budget for FY2026. Cville Right Now reports that he’s not proposing any new tax rate increases. I’ll have details tomorrow.
Before the Charlottesville City Council was briefed on the budget, they spent about an hour learning how the city could raise additional money to cover the costs of the city’s municipal trash collection. The program currently brings in $1.1 million in revenue but costs $2.7 million to operate.
“The last time there was a discussion on this or any changes was in 2007,” said Steven Hicks, the city’s director of public works. “So I do think, at least just to have a dialogue of where we are on our rates is helpful.”
The city hired the firm NewGen Strategies last year to review the program and laid out the first philosophical question for Council. (view the presentation)
“How much of the cost of providing service do you want to fund through rates?” asked Seth Cunningham of NewGen Strategies. “And by rates, like right now, those rates would be through stickers and decals versus through supplementing with the general fund.”
And that’s just for curbside pickup. There are other services such as leaf collection, compost drop off programs, and large item pick-ups. Those all add up to another $1.1 million in costs. Right now the city brings in revenue through the sale of stickers and decals as well as a charge for large-item pickups.
For the core services, Cunningham calculated the current revenue stream at $6.19 a month based on about 15,300 customers. The average cost to provide the service is closer to $16.19 a month. The costs of stickers has not gone up whereas hauling costs have increased.
“One alternative is certainly to keep the exact same structure you have and increase cost,” Cunningham said. “If you did an across the board increase, it would take approximately 150% increase in the sticker and decals to get that $1.1 million get to closer to 2.7 million and that’s approximate.”
Cunningham said another challenge of the current program is that there is no way of knowing if the contractor is removing stickers from trash cans each week. If the city moved to a cart system, existing trash cans would not be be retained and everyone would get a new one from the city.
NewGen is recommending moving to a system where residents and businesses would pay a monthly fee based on the size of the cart they would receive. They’re recommending three tiers with 32 gallon, 64 gallon, or 96 gallon carts. Recycling would be included and would carry on as usual.
The system currently doesn’t allow the city to track how much each household uses the system. Cunningham said the next step would be to do outreach to find out what people think. City Councilor Lloyd Snook has already heard from constituents.
“I’ve already heard from a number of people who have said, ‘I’m living on a fixed income, my husband and I are the only ones here and wee don’t generate anywhere near as much garbage as you think we are, and you’re effectively going to be quadrupling our garbage costs,’” Snook said.
Cunningham does not recommend allowing for smaller carts such one that carries 24 gallon because they are more easily blown over by wind and the trucks have a harder time picking them up.
Another possibility is that under the new system, the city c ould own and operate the trash trucks rather than contracting out the service.
“More localities are reconsidering that just to be able to control the cost a little bit better just because there are a few that are literally just monopolising the industry,” Hicks said.
Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston said he remains concerned that the city is subsidizing trash collection but he said eliminating the smallest possible sticker could get him in trouble with his wife.
“It’s amazing how little trash we put out so if we were to get rid of the 13 gallon sticker, she’d be really mad at me,” Pinkston said. “But because she and I think lots of people the emails that we saw there, like lots of people saying, ‘look, I can get down to not much trash at all.’ I think it would be a mistake to get rid of that option because it allows a lot of people to really minimize the trash put out.”
City Councilor Michael Payne said he would be concerned about the effect on people on fixed-incomes and saw solid waste collection as a core service.
“It just kind of seems like a backhanded way to raise revenue in an even more regressive way than the real estate tax, depending on where we want to set the revenues at,” Payne said.
City Councilor Natalie Oschrin said she was not expecting to see a recommendation for a new system that eliminated the lowest sticker. She has also received a lot of messages that resonated with her.
“I maybe put my trash can on the curb twice in three months,” Oschrin said. “I don’t go through a whole sheet of stickers in a year. And there’s lots of other people out there like that.
Oschrin said she supported the idea of increasing the price of stickers and decals to recover revenue.
“If I suddenly had to pay $10 or $16 for the trash collection every month, even though I’m not using it at all, that is not the incentive structure to reduce my trash volume,” Oschrin said.
After the discussion, Council indicated support for increasing the cost of stickers and decals. City Manager Sam Sanders said he would return with more information in the future.
Before you go: This is an example of the kind of story Town Crier Productions exists to tell. Living in a civilization is complex, and there are many different factors to study. This story exists to explain the reasons why a local government might decide to do something different, and how elected officials provide input. This also went out in the March 5, 2025 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter.
Discover more from Information Charlottesville
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
