By the Coral Gables Gazette editorial board

The debate over Coral Gables’ garbage fee has become a political talking point rather than a policy discussion. At Tuesday’s commission meeting, what began as an amendment to Mayor Vince Lago’s strategic priorities plan quickly turned into a familiar refrain: how to reduce or eliminate what residents pay for trash collection.

But eliminating the fee does not eliminate the cost. Garbage will still need to be collected, transported, and disposed of — and state and county regulations leave the city with little flexibility over where it goes or what it costs. Whether the fee is charged directly to households or absorbed into the general budget, the expense will land somewhere. Pretending otherwise may score applause in the moment, but it will not prepare the city for what is coming.

The real issue is not the existence of the fee — it is the system behind it: how Coral Gables handles waste, enforces its own rules, manages illegal dumping, reduces tonnage, and plans for disposal over the next decade. County tipping fees are already nearing $90 a ton, and green waste taken to private contractors costs almost $50 a ton. Landfills may reach capacity in as little as five to seven years. And Miami-Dade County will pass those increases directly to cities, which will then pass them along one way or another.

Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson made the essential point during the meeting: incentives matter. If residents feel no cost associated with what they throw away — or how they dispose of it — there is little reason to change behavior. Recycling will lag. Green waste will pile into trash pits. Contractors will continue to dump debris illegally. And the city, rather than individual offenders, will shoulder the bill.

Commissioner Ariel Fernandez was right to insist on including the fee in the strategic plan. Long-term financial pressure demands attention. But the better question is not how to hide the cost — it is how to reshape the practices that drive it.

There are models to follow. Cities that have reduced fees have not done so by absorbing costs into their operating budgets. They have modernized collection systems, invested in composting or mulching programs, cracked down on haulers who abuse public rights of way, and implemented tiered pricing based on usage. They have turned waste into material instead of expense.

Commissioners hinted at some of this on Tuesday. The mayor acknowledged both the urgency and inevitability of rising costs. City Manager Peter Iglesais outlined how much is already being subsidized — $8.9 million out of a $15.1 million sanitation bill — and how much green waste alone represents. Anderson pointed to the role of enforcement and personal responsibility. What no one did was reframe the issue as systemic rather than symbolic.

Reducing the fee may be a goal. But if that goal is not paired with a plan to reduce waste, curb dumping, expand composting, and renegotiate disposal contracts with the county, then it becomes an accounting trick — not a policy solution.

Residents deserve clarity about what the city can control and what it cannot. State law requires that most garbage be taken to the county. Miami-Dade sets the transfer rates. Construction debris and private haulers add to the total whether or not households behave responsibly. Without a plan to intervene upstream — before trash reaches the curb — the city will continue to pay, even if residents no longer see a line item on their bill.

The strategic plan should reflect that reality. It should view garbage not as a budget nuisance but as a sustainability problem, a land-use problem, and a behavioral problem. The city’s goal should not be to eliminate the fee in isolation but to reduce the need for it over time.

To do that, the commission must pursue several practical steps:

• Crack down on illegal dumping by contractors and enforce penalties consistently.
• Expand recycling and compost initiatives so green waste is diverted before it reaches the street.
• Structure incentives so residents who reduce waste see financial benefits, rather than blanket subsidies that reward overuse.
• Explore shared regional solutions before the county’s landfill capacity crisis becomes a bill residents cannot avoid.

Coral Gables can lead on this issue — but not if it confines the debate to whether a line item stays on or comes off the bill. The commission has an opportunity to treat garbage as a public service requiring the same strategic foresight applied to transportation, water management, and resilience planning.

Residents do not expect trash to disappear. They expect their leaders to deal with it honestly, efficiently, and with an eye to the future. Eliminating the garbage fee without changing how the city handles garbage would be the least honest and least sustainable outcome of all.