City of Albany does not exempt the school district from fees, but the franchise fee is built into the service rate, not computed or billed separately.

Charlie Adams

N/A. No franchise fees on solid waste, we have a contract with a hauler…………………….MKM

"Kelly McKinnis"

Hi Olivia,

The following cases the court ruled that state agencies, including school districts, enjoy immunity from local regulation unless the state, through statute or provision of the state constitution, has consented to waive such immunity:

City of Santa Ana v. Board of Education (1967) 255 Cal. App. 2d 178,

Del Norte Disposal, Inc. v. Department of Corrections (1994) 26 Cal. App. 4th 1009, 1012-1013, and

Laidlaws Waste Systems, Inc. v. Bay Cities Services, Inc. 43 Cal. App. 4th 630.

The City of San Jose has taken the position that the haulers are liable for the city fees and not the customer. The hauler’s argue that since they are not able to bill the state agencies, including school districts, for the city fees that they (the haulers) should not be liable for such fee.

State agencies and school districts are free to contract with a solid waste provider, regardless of which hauler the City has its franchise.

As I said on the phone, I am not an attorney, but wished to offer you some of the information I have developed through research on the issue. I hope this helps.

HF&H Consultants provides a variety of solid waste consulting services exclusively to governmental agencies. If you would like to know more about HF&H and the services we provide, please visit our website at

Darrell Bice

Director of Solid Waste & Recycling Audits

HF&H Consultants

3990 Westerly Place, Suite 195

Newport Beach, CA92660

Office - 949-251-0231

Cell - 562-394-3911

Fax - 949-251-9741

Our agreement with the waste hauler stipulates that the City will bill residential, but the contractor bills and collects commercial so there are no franchise fees on school districts.

The City also receives franchise fees from the gas and cable companies, but I quite frankly do not know if they are included or not.

Judith A. Hashem

Finance Director

608 Heber Avenue

Calexico, CA92231

(760) 768-2135

The attached document may help you. It is my understanding that cities cannot force schools within its limits to be serviced by the city’s exclusive franchise hauler and cannot be made to pay the franchise fee. In our case, the city and one school district have the same hauler, but we do not collect franchise fees from the district.Please share with me any additional information on this issue and the issue of school districts paying into a city’s Integrated Waste Management Fee. Good luck!

Olivia – Franchise fees are assessed on the company for the use of the City’s right of way, not on the user. Accordingly, it would not make sense to “waive” them for the school district, since the school district is not responsible for paying them. I suppose you could adopt a franchise fee that excludes trash revenues from the school district, and then adopt a commensurately lower rate for schools.

However, you will just be lowering General Fund revenues in doing this. Might make more sense just to recognize the subsidy and write the school district a check from the General Fund for the value of this. The net affect is the same, but the subsidy is clearer. (which might be a good thing or a bad thing … )

The Short Story: We don’t do this.

- Bill

Bill Statler

Director of Finance & Information Technology

City of San Luis Obispo

990 Palm Street

San Luis Obispo, CA93401

Phone: 805.781.7125

Fax: 805.781.7401

Email: