Santa Ana residents might see their street sweeping fee more than double from $5.35 to $11.72 a month this summer to address an increase in contract costs due to state prevailing wage law.
Or potentially face massive cutbacks in street sweeping services.
“We have seniors that live on set incomes. We have people that this is going to be a lot of money for them.” said Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua at Tuesday’s council meeting. “I can’t support this. I’m ok with not having street sweeping every week if we don’t have the funding.”
On Tuesday, city council members voted to continue debate on the increase to the March 19 city council meeting.
Public Works Director Nabil Saba said if officials don’t hike up the fee, street sweeping services would have to be cut by 73% and the city would have to reduce sweeping to once a month instead of once a week.
“We would have to delete vacancies and not hire staff. The impacts are just too severe if we don’t have these adjustments,” he said.
Councilmember Thai Viet Phan said she supports the increase, adding clean streets help attract new businesses and make residents feel safe.
“In order to maintain these services to make sure Santa Ana is clean, safe, and beautiful – this has to go forward,” she said. “Or else we’re looking at major cuts to a lot of departments here in the city, and I don’t think that’s something I’m supportive of.”
City staff said dipping into the general fund to absorb the increased costs could lead to cuts to other services like public safety and library funding down the road.
The proposed increase comes as the city is looking at a potential budget gap with a loss of sales tax revenue expected in 2029 when a special tax – Measure X – lowers that year.
If the fee increase is approved as is, residents’ rate would rise by 3.5% every summer to keep up with inflation and rising operational costs shooting to $13.45 a month by 2028 – translating into a 251% increase from the initial service fee.
Officials say the increase is also needed because of inflation and because the city plans to clean the streets more frequently as well as to increase efforts to curb illegal dumping.
Prevailing Wage Law Forces New Contract
Santa Ana residents haven’t seen an increase in their sanitation fee, which pays for street sweeping, illegal dumping removal, trash removal, sidewalk and alley cleaning, weed abatement and right of way enforcement, since 1996, according to a staff report.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Saba said one of the main reasons for the increase is the city had to get a new street sweeping contract to comply with state prevailing wages requirements.
“The contract costs increased by 285%,” Saba told council members.
He said that starting July 1, the city would have to pay $3.4 million a year for the street sweeping under the new proposed contract instead of $1 million.
“The old contract we paid about $18 a linear mile for street sweeping,” Saba said. “Now we have to pay $58. Prevailing wage is one factor.”
A prevailing wage is the average pay given to workers in a specific occupation and in California all public work project employees must be paid a prevailing wage determined by the state’s department of industrial relations.
A state assembly bill passed in 2022 expanded the definition of public work project employees to include street sweepers.
In compliance with California Proposition 218, which prohibits local government from imposing any new or increased fee if a majority of residents vote against it, the city sent out 48,302 public notices to residents.
City Clerk Jennifer Hall said at Tuesday’s meeting that there needed to be at least 24,152 written protests for the city to have options to deny the fee.
The city received only 104 written complaints about the street sweeping fee hike.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
Hugo Rios is a Voice of OC intern. Contact him at hugo.toni.rios@gmail.com or on Twitter @hugoriosss
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