TAKE TWO ON TRASH COLLECTION - YAKITY YAK

Waste Management, the company that provides our garbage containers and who collects the trash every Monday, has a franchise contract with the City of Oakland.  This contract sets the garbage collection rates for an annual period, after which the negotiated rates may be raised.

For multi-unit commercial residential buildings, such as those we rent, the rates charged are $22.87 per month per unit and assumes a 32-gallon garbage capacity.  For 36-units (for example, buildings 120, 130, 142 and 150 actually have 38-units in total but not all are occupied), Waste Management calculates that there should be a 32-gallon garbage capacity per unit per month and multiplies this amount by the number of units to determine the number of garbage containers that should be allocated.

So, 32 gallons * 36 units = 1,152 gallons of garbage per month

1,152 gallons divided by a 96 gallon garbage container = 12 Large size garbage containers 

for all four buildings combined or 6 large garbage containers shared between two buildings.

Garbage collection is similar to a utility.  Each tenant pays their own PG&E bill and they pay only what they are charged by PG&E.

For evidence of the garbage “utility” charges, click here.  See Page 2 of the rate report for substantiation of the $22.78 monthly fee which affords garbage collection once per week, per month.

120 and 130 Caldecott Lane buildings share two 96-gallon (large) containers and two 35-gallon containers.

142 and 150 Caldecott Lane residents share three 96-gallon (large) containers.

In addition, any garbage bag left outside the garbage container is charged a $7.38 charge per bag and property management is charged for overages every week.

There appear to be three issues:

1.        An inadequate number of garbage containers;
2.        Unnecessary overages resulting from an inadequate number of garbage containers;
3.        Garbage collection fees that are being over (or under) charged the residents.  Of course, these fees exclude the costs for California Waste Solutions who handles recycling.

Want to solve this problem?

Make an anonymous report to Building Code Enforcement by calling (510) 238 -3381 and file your own complaint.  You are not required to include your name on the complaint.

You wouldn't be the first to log a complaint.  The earliest complaint logged was on July 12, 2012!

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