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 Facing an estimated $745 million budget shortfall, the mayor will
introduce a first-ever garbage fee in his budget address on Tuesday.
Emanuel also will announce a $543 million property tax hike, a
65-percent increase above current levies and the largest jump in
modern memory.
Both steps are responses to fiscal distress that has reduced Chicago
to the same junk-status credit rating as Detroit, which only came
out of bankruptcy last year. They reflect Emanuel’s limited options
for a quick infusion of dollars, particularly since the state
legislature is locked in a budget impasse that has carried on for
nearly three months past the July 1 start of the state’s fiscal
year. Emanuel also will proposed a tax on the sale of e-cigarettes
and new surcharges on ridesharing companies, such as Uber.
Among big U.S. cities, only Chicago, Boston and New York City do not
charge residents at least some fee tied to garbage disposal,
according to a 2014 study by the Citizens Budget Commission, a New
York City-based civic watchdog. Chicago also is the
second-least-efficient garbage collector, with only New York paying
more to collect a ton of garbage, the group found.
 The new $9.50 per month flat fee Emanuel wants to charge the 613,000
households that would have to pay for garbage collection is expected
to raise more than $60 million. The mayor has proposed cutting that
monthly fee in half for about 40,000 seniors with household income
of $55,000 or less.
The decision to target garbage is a measure of the political risks
President Obama’s former chief of staff is taking early in his
second term as Chicago mayor. It may further divide rich and poor in
a city known for its fractious politics, with wealthier
neighborhoods appearing most likely to buy in, but resistance
emerging from low-income areas where garbage service is spotty and
residents worry about whether they can afford to pay.
"I'm hearing a 'no' on property taxes and a 'hell no!' on a garbage
tax," said Alderman Ricardo Munoz, whose ward on Chicago's southwest
side, which is mainly low and middle-income, voted overwhelmingly
against Emanuel in last spring's mayoral election. The ward gave
Emanuel’s left-of-center opponent in this year’s mayoral race, Cook
County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, 80-percent support.
In the predominantly African American South Lawndale neighborhood on
Chicago’s West Side, Janie Sims predicted neighbors on her violent,
impoverished street – a thoroughfare marked by frequent shootings,
with many vacant lots and boarded-up, century-old brick homes -
wouldn't pay because service is unreliable. Vagrants often steal
garbage containers in her alley. "I don't have any place to put my
trash," said Sims, a 63-year-old lab technician. "It's horrible."
Other aldermen believe imposing a garbage fee stops the free ride
for people living in residences smaller than four units, who have in
effect been subsidized by those in condominiums and other larger
apartment buildings who are charged for garbage collection.
“They’re paying for everybody else to get free garbage pick-up while
they have to pay for their own,” said Alderman Joe Moore, whose
north side ward includes the city’s lakefront high rises.
 Gunnar Branson, a 50-year-old real estate executive who lives just a
block from Emanuel's wood-frame home on Chicago's North Side,
flinches at paying a new garbage fee but recognizes its urgency and
is resigned to its imposition. "I hate that, but I hate the fact
that I have to pay for groceries too, and I have to pay for gas," he
said. "Obviously, we want everything for free."
Branson, who lives close enough to Emanuel to occasionally receive
the mayor's mail when it is delivered by mistake, said he knows
about the troubled and inefficient history of garbage collection in
Chicago. But he said that is unrelated to the true economic and
environmental costs of waste disposal.
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“If there’s transparency to the cost of the garbage collection, it
can help incent people to throw away less and to be mindful of the
flow of refuse, which from an environmental standpoint is a good
thing,” he said.
Emanuel’s revenue-raising swoop on Chicago's piles of garbage also
provides a glimpse into the way inefficiency and corruption have
bloated Chicago’s city’s budget. A former sanitation department
commissioner, Al Sanchez, served prison time after a federal jury in
2009 found he gave jobs and promotions in exchange for campaign work
for the Democrats.
Chicago is a rarity among major cities for using three-person crews
on garbage trucks, an arrangement New York City abandoned in the
1980s. One study said Chicago could save $19.4 million by moving to
two-person crews.
Emanuel expended political capital in his first term imposing a
simpler, money-saving route map that followed the city’s grid-based
street system, rather than political ward boundaries that had
defined garbage routes for generations. Emanuel claimed the change
has saved the city an estimated $28 million per year.
Despite the new efficiency in routes, a city budget spokeswoman said
Chicago this year expects to spend $244 million on garbage
collection, a rise of 16 percent in the past four years. One factor
keeping costs high: the city's 50 aldermen successfully have
preserved the jobs of so-called “ward superintendents,” plum
positions that often include $100,000-plus salaries to oversee
garbage collection, snow removal and other services in the city’s 50
wards.
A 2011 report from Chicago's inspector general estimated private
contractors could shave $165 million from the city's trash costs
that year of $210 million.
But privatization is considered unlikely because of labor union
opposition and the lingering bad taste left by the 2009 decision to
lease the city's parking meters to a private company. Parking rates
have quadrupled since then.
“For some cities, particularly on the West Coast where
private-sector workforces are used for garbage collection, the
entirety of the cost is passed along to residents,” said Tammy
Gamerman, a senior research associate with the Citizens Budget
Commission, who has written its reports on the subject.
(Reporting by Dave McKinney; Editing by Martin Howell)
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