JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax has discovered the department in charge of picking up your trash is in the red and has been for years.
Investigator Emily Turner found the Solid Waste department has been borrowing millions of dollars from the general fund since 2017. That’s money it has to pay back, and so far, there are no official plans to balance the budget.
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“There’s more money going out than coming in,” he says.
Councilman Al Ferraro put it bluntly at a public meeting about the return of curbside recycling.
While the situation is that simple, getting out of it isn’t.
By the end of this fiscal year, Solid Waste will have borrowed more than $31 million from the general fund. So far, it hasn’t paid a single cent back, though it’s been making withdrawals almost every year since 2017.
“Every year we delay,” says councilman Matt Carlucci, “It increases the loan that has to be paid back.”
Solid Waste has become a financial black hole for the city. The cost to keep your curbside clean, even without the pickup of recycling, outpaces the $151.80 locals pay per year. The rate hasn’t been increased in more than a decade.
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Action News Jax asked the city how much it would need to charge to break even, and it says it’s working on that number. But in the meantime, we found the general fund lent Solid Waste more than $7.7 million this year alone.
That’s a number likely to climb significantly soon.
In February, two of the three companies contracted to haul waste for the city have a rate review and as Chief Administrative Officer Brian Hughes put it, “It is likely on their end that we will have to analyze their proposals for rate increases to those contrasts based on the current labor market.”
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Those rate reviews will be in February, and both haulers have indicated they plan to ask the city for more money, making the bottom line worse if it doesn’t pass the cost to the taxpayer. It would take both the mayor’s office and council to approve a rate increase for homeowners, but so far, no plan is in place to do so.