City OKs Slapping Landlords With Liens For Money Owed By Trash Bill-Stiffing Tenants

In Gilroy, California, the Gilroy Dispatch reports:

• A motion to place liens on 127 Gilroy properties with tenants who haven’t paid their trash bills for a minimum of 120 days reluctantly received a passing vote by the City Council Monday. Council members said they are legally bound to approve it because of city health codes.
  
  
• Recology South Valley, the company that holds an exclusive trash collecting contract with the city, claims the total of outstanding bills from Gilroy homes is $35,131. Recology sent letters to homeowners with outstanding bills in April, giving them a June 15 payment deadline.
  
  
• “There’s got to be a better way," Mayor Al Pinheiro said. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.” Pinheiro, a landlord himself, doesn’t understand why a homeowner is punished for a bill the tenant does not pay, questioning why Recology can’t just stop service to the tenants who don’t pay – or take some other credit action against the tenants, not the homeowner.
  
  
• Recology provided Council with a list of those who haven’t paid their trash bill – about half of whom also own of the property – and how much each of them owes.

For more, see Council OK’s liens for garbage bill non-payment.