After receiving trash pickup from the city for decades, about 110 multifamily complexes and 80 schools, churches and other nonprofits on Oahu will need to start paying for their own service beginning Feb. 1.

While the majority of single-family properties on the island don’t pay a fee for curbside trash service, most — but not all — of the owners of nonresidential buildings as well as townhouse, condominium and apartment complexes do pay for private companies to regularly remove the garbage from their dumpsters.

That will change Jan. 31, city Environmental Services Director Lori Kahikina said in a letter sent out July 25.

"Your property has had the benefit of the city’s refuse collection service at no charge for many years while other, similar privately owned properties have had to use private refuse hauling service," Kahikina said in her letter.

Some property managers who have a lot of dumpsters now must scramble to find what could amount to tens of thousands of dollars annually to pay for the services of a private hauler.

Phillip Huth, resident manager for the Palm Villas apartment complex in Ewa by Gentry, said city officials should have sat down with affected property owners to look at possible alternatives to ending the service entirely.

"They offered no other option than to cut us off altogether," Huth said.

Members of the owners association for the 352-unit complex are reviewing proposals from several private haulers. Plans range from about $3,100 to $4,000 monthly to clear the property’s 17 bins twice a week, but the association wants to try to obtain assurances that hikes will be minimal in future years, Huth said.

Inevitably, the cost will be passed on to owners, tacking on about $11-$13 in monthly maintenance fees per apartment unit, Huth said. Any renters would then be affected, he said.

"People wonder how folks get put out on the street and homeless," Huth said. "Well, $13 more in monthly fees could do it."

He said unit owners already pay up to $400 or more in fees for the larger apartments in the complex.

"I mean, they’re struggling with these fees as it is," Huth said.

Kahikina told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week that her department has not calculated how much it will save the city to stop the service.

"That’s not what prompted this decision," she said, calling it a matter of equity because there are about 4,000 multifamily buildings whose owners are already paying for private service. "We didn’t even count the number of nonprofits."

Additionally, the service requires the use of front-loader trucks, and all seven of the font-loader trucks in the Refuse Division’s fleet are beyond their useful life, Kahikina said. The City Council has denied funding to purchase two new front-loaders two years in a row, and it’s becoming harder to find replacement parts, she said, "so it actually becomes a safety issue for our employees."

By eliminating the service, the city will no longer replace the trucks or pay for repairs of the existing fleet, she said. (Two of the front-loaders will likely be kept because the city has 52 of its own properties that need to be serviced with them.)

The eight workers with front-loader pickup responsibilities also do manual pickup in those areas that automated trash haulers can’t access, and bulky-item pickup, and will now have more time for those duties.

"Hopefully, we can catch up with the bulky," Kahikina said.

The ending of the service was applauded by Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi, who has been advocating the move for years and has led the effort to reject funding for new front-end loaders.

"It wasn’t fairly done," Kobayashi said. "Some private schools got pickup but not others, some churches and some condos."

Even longtime refuse employees can’t remember when the pickups for multifamily residential and nonresidential properties first began, city officials said.

What is clear is that in order to qualify for the service, a property owner requiring trash removal from a dumpster had to have enough space on the property to allow a front-loader to drive in, load and unload all dumpsters, and leave the property without needing to ever back up, apparently for safety and liability reasons.

Kobayashi also has liability concerns about the city policy requiring front-loader refuse trucks to go onto private property. Standard automated pickup requires homeowners to place their gray, green and blue containers along the curbside, she said.

Other managers of affected properties were philosophical about the impending policy change.

Sister Joan of Arc Souza, head of St. Francis School, said she’s grateful her school was able to benefit from the pickups for as far back as she can remember.

"But things change, life moves on," Souza said, noting that she’s close to finalizing a deal with a private hauler that will provide service for the school’s four bins twice a week at a cost of just under $1,000 a month. "I can complain, but we’re not going to change it. You’ve got to fight the battles you think you can win."

Souza said the school is sharing the added cost with its affiliated Sisters of St. Francis convent, as well as others who use the property.

Other, smaller schools may be more vulnerable to a financial hit, especially if they have numerous bins, Souza said.

Rodney Saloricman Jr., resident manager at the Arbors in Ewa complex, said it will likely cost up to $4,000 monthly for a private hauler to service its 18 bins.

Saloricman said he understands the city’s logic, noting that the multifamily complex next to his has paid for trash service for years.

His owners association, however, is scrambling to see where in next year’s budget it can cut back to avoid a fee increase, and wishes the city would have offered more time for the switch.