A group of local business leaders filed paperwork Monday for a November ballot measure that could cancel for two years San Diego’s controversial new trash fee for single-family homes. If a simple majority of city voters approve the measure, it would cancel the fee from July 2027 through June 2029 and worsen the city’s already bleak budget picture by reducing revenue by nearly $100 million a year. The measure appears likely to appear on the ballot because the sponsors, the Lincoln Club Business League, plan to rely on the much lower threshold required under state law for measures repealing taxes and fees. They must collect just over 21,000 valid signatures by early August — about one-quarter of the 82,000 signatures required to place most other city measures on the ballot. The league says recent polling it has conducted shows extremely strong support for repealing the new trash fee, which opponents have criticized as a bait and switch. Before voters considered the 2022 ballot measure that allowed the new fees, city officials had estimated they would ultimately be in the range of $23 to $29 per month, based on a relatively limited analysis. A more thorough analysis conducted after voters had already approved levying the fees determined they needed to be much higher for the city to cover its costs. The San Diego City Council last June approved a monthly fee of $43.60. “This is about honesty, accountability and affordability,” said former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the business league’s chief executive. “San Diegans were misled, and the trash tax is now costing them far more than promised.” A measure repealing the trash fee more permanently by overturning the 2022 ballot measure would have required the higher signature threshold. The league instead focused on repealing the fees that were set last June. Those fees covered four fiscal years, from July 2025 through June 2029. If voters repeal them in November, the repeal would take effect in July 2027 and run through the end of the four-year window — the final two years. In addition to punishing city officials for what he says was a bait and switch, Faulconer said passing such a measure would send a message to city leaders to stop piling on new fees to fix their own management failures. “It’s time to push back,” said Faulconer, contending city officials need to cut spending instead of always looking for taxpayers to bail them out. “Everything coming out of City Hall right now is asking people to pay more.” Faulconer, who served as mayor of San Diego from 2014 through 2020, was referring to higher fees for parking, new paid parking in Balboa Park and a wide variety of other recent city fee hikes. But the city is also still paying millions of dollars per year in operations, security and bond financing costs for his administration’s botched purchase of the unusable office tower at 101 Ash St. When asked about concerns his measure could slash city revenue so aggressively it could force deep budget cuts, Faulconer echoed a concern raised by union leaders and some council members about the growing number of highly paid middle managers at City Hall. “That alone is costing the city tens of millions of dollars,” Faulconer said. The business league is also criticizing how the fee was rolled out by city officials. “The city’s implementation of the new trash fees has been a fiasco: missing bins, delayed delivery, inconsistent service, shifting explanations about costs, and new layers of costly and unaccountable bureaucracy,” the league says in its ballot statement. Faulconer said the league plans to use a combination of paid signature-gatherers and volunteers but suggested it won’t be hard to collect enough signatures. “We expect San Diegans to overwhelmingly support this,” he said. “There’s a lot of anger out there, and rightfully so.” Signature gathering can legally start in 21 days. The text of the ballot measure was published Monday in the San Diego Daily Transcript. Faulconer said other groups are expected to join the league to create a strong coalition, but he said he couldn’t announce any official partners yet. He also declined to estimate how much money the league would have for signature gathering and a campaign to support the measure at the polls. Faulconer said the goal is to collect more than 30,000 signatures to ensure there are more than the 21,000 required after election officials declare some invalid. He said the league is confident the measure is eligible for the lower signature threshold, which was provided under Proposition 218. Only 5% of the total number of city votes cast in the last gubernatorial election are needed to force a referendum on a local tax or fee. In the 2022 governor’s race, 421,007 San Diegans cast ballots — so it would take 21,051 verified signatures in elections this year. “We have worked closely with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to craft a measure that fully complies with the state constitution,” Faulconer said. Councilmember Raul Campillo, who voted against the new trash fee last June, has tried to prevent a repeat of the new fee by requiring more thorough study of possible new fees before a vote. But the council’s Rules Committee rejected his proposal last month. ...read more read less