If San Diego is a model other cities should emulate, nation is in trouble

In June — after congratulating San Diego’s elected leaders for their successful long con in winning approval of trash fees on more than 200,000 single-family homes — this editorial page noted that Councilmembers Joe LaCava and Sean Elo-Rivera had predicted in 2022 that city trash policy changes would be a showcase for “local innovation.”  We didn’t buy it, writing, “The likelihood that this will go well — and not be a bureaucratic nightmare for thousands of homeowners — is infinitesimal.”

Fast-forward three months to a Sept. 14 U-T report that described the city’s “chaotic” implementation of the program. Fewer than half of the 20,000 households losing city pickup have secured private haulers, with many facing rejections, steep rates or a maze of complications. Meanwhile, most of the 225,000 homeowners who now must pay for city service still hadn’t chosen their bin sizes online before the Sept. 30 deadline, with many complaining of poor or confusing city outreach.

But does Mayor Todd Gloria actually buy the “local innovation” argument? An Aug. 14 report on Bloomberg Cities Network, which is affiliated with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, depicted the city’s trash program as being a model of thoughtful efficiency. It said the Gloria administration is “offering lessons to local leaders everywhere about not just enduring budget stress, but making the most of it. According to San Diego’s Acting Chief Innovation Officer Alexander Hempton, Mayor Gloria is urging his team to use this moment of financial strain as an opportunity to propose new ideas and work in new ways without sacrificing effectiveness. ‘The message from the mayor is clear,’ Hempton explains. ‘We need to rethink how we operate.’”

If this is just the mayor’s staff spinning an East Coast journalist, that’s one thing. But if this is really the view of Gloria and his top aides, they are in a reality-denying bubble. There is a much more important group that believes the city needs to “rethink” how it operates: hundreds of thousands of disillusioned San Diegans.