Reno City Council voted to move forward with a franchise fee increase for its sanitation company from 8% to 14%
Right now, Waste Management - which handles the city's trash - pays 8% of the growth revenue it gets from its services in Reno to the city. Now, that rate will bump up to 14%.
In turn, this is estimated to increase sanitation bills by $16.80 per year for each household, or about $4.20 per quarterly bill. The city said this is the first major increase in a long time.
"The sanitation franchise fees were done back in the '90s. They made some contractual changes back in 2012 and really nothing since that," said Vicki Van Buren, Director of Finance, City of Reno.
Mayor Hillary Schieve, Vice Mayor Miguel Martinez, and Councilmember Meghan Ebert voted against the increase, while Councilmembers Devon Reese, Naomi Duerr, Kathleen Taylor, and Brandi Anderson voted in favor.
"Increasing fees is never popular," Van Buren said. "The thought process behind it, we do the ten-year modeling to see what actually works."
Van Buren said the city modeled increases of 2%, 4%, and 6%, and ultimately went with the latter.
The city said the move will raise $5.5 million. This would help address its $24 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2027. The city has already frozen 20 open positions and reduced services as part of efforts to cut $16 million in expenses.
"In times of this budget crisis, it will also start to bridge a gap as we move forward in a more long-term plan," Van Buren said.
The deficit could be a continuing issue, since the city said its biggest sources of revenue -- including franchise fees from various services -- don't keep up with inflation.
While City Council discussed the item in its meeting on Wednesday, the city's legal team brought up that Waste Management charges the city a fee, and the city gets a franchise fee on top of that. Van Buren said the company increases this fee annually, which complicates things.
"Waste Management does do a CPI (Consumer Price Index) increase every year, and potentially that is part of this. So that's something else we're going to look at," she said.
Van Buren said this increase is usually around 2-3% every year.
The increase puts Reno's fees in line with Sparks, which increased its sanitation franchise fees from 8% to 14% last May.
We reached out to Waste Management for comment but haven't heard back at the time of writing.
The Reno City Council passed the motion with a vote of 4-3.
