Laguna beach city news City of Laguna Beach, California

The Next Regular Meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, September 24 at 5:00 P.M.

The "Tentative Agenda" is strictly tentative and there is no guarantee that items listed will be agendized as scheduled due to changing priorities, new information, staff workloads, and other unforeseeable events.

Q: What is going on with the CR&R Transition? Did my rates go up?

A: We wanted to make sure that residents were aware of some of the Council's discussion about CR&R’s transition and rates. It's probably no surprise that, in light of inflation nationwide and regulatory compliance requirements, costs for this service were going up (as fuel, labor, landfill fees, changes in the recycling market, and insurance and many other company costs were increasing). While CR&R's overall proposed rate package was lower than Waste Management's, both firms proposed rates for fiscal year 2024-25 that were higher than the previous contract's rates. Again, CR&R's proposed rates for 2024-25 as a whole were an increase over Waste Management's 2023-24 rates, but CR&R's 2024-25 rates were lower than what Waste Management had proposed charging for 2024-25 and beyond.

We are aware that residents are asking why the City changed haulers. Cities like ours are required to go out to bid for waste management services. Our most recent bid process occurred in 2022, when the city issued a request for proposals for these services. We had a 3rd party independent evaluator review them to ensure that there was no bias, as these kinds of bids are contentious and can be controversial. The Council selected CR&R to take over, in part because of more amenities and in part because of competitive costing.

The transition from Waste Management to CR&R began -one year before July 1, 2024, which was the turnover date. Transitions like this take a lot of planning, so we had extensive printed material, targeted social media campaigns, as well as two Town Hall meetings (which I attended). But we also recognized that despite our best planning, things will go wrong and need to be addressed. Things like cart choices, multi-family unit service, truck routes, and more.

CR&R is required to provide new carts and remove the old carts from the previous hauler. The cart deliveries began on July 1st and will end in early October. The new carts were ordered based on account information transferred to CR&R from Waste Management. We are aware that some residents received incorrect cart sizes and/or quantities. CR&R is working with residents to correct the cart size information and scheduling cart exchanges. Due to the extent of the incorrect information received from the previous hauler, cart exchanges are expected to occur over the next few months. We thank all residents for their patience and cooperation during this process.

We also completely changed the billing process, as we had to do, to remove the billing from your County property tax bill and place it instead on a direct bill system (where residents pay CR&R directly - this happens in a great number of other cities).

I wanted to assure the Laguna Beach public that our staff is working hard with CR&R to address each issue and question, one by one. That takes a lot of time, though, so I respectfully ask people to be patient with how and when we can get to your specific issue. We have two full time City staff members working very hard on this, and CR&R has assigned two Sustainability Specialists to address issues with us and provides a dedicated Laguna Beach Customer Service number to assist residents.

It's only September, and the transition happened about 60 days ago. We envision that it will take another 2-3 months to get the service, billing questions, and other issues fully addressed.

All of that noted, anyone with concerns and questions should use our website www.lagunabeachcity.net/crrtransition to ensure that they are addressed and also to find contact information for CR&R staff.

Reminder: New Commercial District Beautification/Property Maintenance Program

The Laguna Beach City Council approved a Commercial District Beautification/Property Maintenance program at its July 23, 2024, City Council meeting. The goal of the Program is to promote and incentivize commercial property maintenance throughout the City. The Program has two key components:

1) Reimbursement of City Fees

2) Enforcement

For more information about the Commercial District Beautification and Property Maintenance Program, including details on the reimbursement process, please contact Louie Lacasella at (949) 497-0736 or llacasella@lagunabeachcity.net.