Fighting Waste Management's Invalid Bill

City Hall appears to be engaged in a covert alliance with Waste Management to make residents pay their garbage bill for July-August-September – despite the public health menace everyone faced for almost all of July. Waste Management locked out hundreds of drivers; the corporation's lame substitute for service left rotting garbage everywhere.

Waste Management and City officials want residents to accept a token credit on their bills, based on the number of pickups that the individual household or business did not receive. The City advises residents to call a Waste Management number to work out the details.

What about the squalor, smells, and public health menace that all of us endured as we walked or drove around Oakland? Because no one knew when a Waste Management truck might come by, everyone had to leave cans of rotting garbage by the curb all the time.

Recently, some residents received "friendly reminder" notices from Waste Management asking them to pay their bill, making vague threats of a lien on their homes if they do not. Here is one such notice as a resident sent it back to Waste Management:

As this resident argues, the way to teach Waste Management a lesson for giving us all a public health crisis is to insist on a rebate for three months, to demand triple damages. While the City is referring residents to talk to Waste Management about token rebates, it has asked the huge corporation for a blanket rebate of only one month, according to a remark by a public works official at the city council meeting of Sept. 18.

If there is to be a lien, Waste Management must request that Oakland file it, according to the contract between the corporation and the City. Will Waste Management ask the City to put a lien on this resident's property? Will the city attorney do the corporation's bidding? These are not idle questions. Some residents are making a reasonable response to unreasonable bills. Their action should bring forth a revealing reaction from the City.

Dellums' publicity machine likes to claim credit for the mayor's belated mediation between Waste Management and the Teamsters. Until residents get a reduction in their bill on the order of three full months of no-charge service, they can thank mayor Dellums for walking away from the job after a day in the limelight.

Waste Management Wins No-Penalty Deal from Dellums

Waste Management will give single-family homes a credit for one month on their garbage bills, according to a settlement announced Sept. 27, 2007 by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. Although the corporation's lockout created a public health menace for all residents and businesses, regardless of whether they did not receive pickups of their own trash, Waste Management will pay no penalty, such as triple damages, a complete cancellation of the July-August-September bill.

According to news reports, "commercial and multi-family customers" will not even get a one-month credit. They will have to negotiate over claims for missed pickups. It is not clear whether "multi-family" customers essentially means apartment buildings. If it does, Dellums has approved a settlement that makes second-class residents of apartment tenants and apartment owners, depending who pays the garbage bill according to the particular rental agreement. The Waste Management-Dellums deal definitely relegates merchants to second-class status.

"We are pleased that the residents of Oakland will be receiving credit for the limited service experienced during the month of July," said a prepared statement from Dellums' office. "This is a positive indication that Waste Management is taking steps to demonstrate their commitment to our residents and the city of Oakland."

Only three weeks after announcing a miserable settlement with Waste Management for creating a public health menace last July, the City of Oakland is back in business as enforcer of the corporation's bills. As depicted above, a customer gave the City an opportunity to press for a penalty on Waste Management using the principle of punitive triple damages by demanding cancellation of the entire three-month garbage bill.

Instead, the City sent the following demand for payment upon threat of a lien on the homeowner. The lien notice included a $50 penalty.

Although this Waste Management victim ("customer") was pushing for extra damages against the corporation, it turns out that the City of Oakland just issued similar lien notices to a large number of customers, hitting them all for $50 penalties.

During and after the lockout, city attorney John Russo posed as a hero:

"We told the company we will not stand behind their liens," Russo said. "We're not putting liens on anyone who says they didn't get service. The burden of proof lies with Waste Management." (San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 26, 2007)

The City and Waste Management announced their settlement for customers on Sept. 27; customers received revised bills after that date. Yet the City rushed to roll out lien action, apparently taking Oct. 15 as the cutoff; if you did not hustle to pay by that date, you are now out an extra $50 fee for the City lien notice.

Residents have a bitter choice: pay the lien notice including the $50 penalty, or call Waste Management and the City Attorney demanding the right to pay the bill directly to Waste Management without a penalty. Some residents have been promised the latter option on the phone, but we have seen nothing in writing.

The City of Oakland harassed nearly 2,000 families with lien threats simply because the city attorney and city administrator ignored the confusion caused by Waste Management's July lockout.

Every year Waste Management gives the City a list of delinquent accounts. Under the contract between the corporation and the City, the latter enforces payment by threat of lien. There was a sharp jump this year in the number of customers threatened with liens. From 2005 to 2006 the number of delinquent accounts rose only 387, or less than 6 percent. But from 2006 to 2007, the number of threatened families rose 32 percent. The extra increase amounts to 1,883 families threatened with liens in the aftermath of the lockout.

From City reports. Harassed portion calculated as excess over straight-line projection.

Instead of sorting out the confusion left by the lockout and Waste Management's terrible communications with customers, instead of demanding that Waste Management take time this year to explain things to people with "delinquent" bills, the city attorney and city administrator simply drove a steamroller over these families as though the lockout had never happened.

The numbers come from a report that a City "revenue manager" prepares each year for the city council. This year the document became public two days before Thanksgiving. As an excuse, it offers these words:

"Waste Management of Alameda County has provided verbal assurance (our emphasis – ORPN) to the City that all agreed credit adjustments have been applied to customer accounts for the service disruptions that resulted from the lock out during the month of July 2007. City staff will not file delinquent garbage service liens until it has received written assurance that all service credits have been applied and an updated delinquent account list is provided by WMAC that reflects the July service credit and related payment adjustments."

The document was not provided to the threatened households. Instead, weeks ago thousands of people received City notices threatening a lien on their home. They had to scramble to deal with Waste Management's messed-up billing on their own.

City Hall must have congratulated itself for stiffing residents. Each lien notice tacks on a $50 "administrative charge" (see above), even if you pay as soon as notified. The 1,883 victims pay about $100,000 in such charges – enough to cover the raise demanded by mayor Dellums at the start of his term.