Crain's Chicago Business

Chicago would become the eighth major city in the nation to charge for residential garbage collection, if Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council move ahead with a plan to ding homeowners.

There is a “building consensus” among aldermen for “some form of a garbage fee like other communities around the state and country have,” Emanuel said during recent interview with reporter Bill Cameron of WLS-AM/890.

The Emanuel administration is reviewing its options as it wrestles with a $754 million budget deficit over this year and next.

Los Angeles is the largest city in the nation to charge for trash collection, with a flat fee of $36.32 per month for one and two-unit buildings, according to a report by the New York-based Citizens Budget Commission, issued Feb. 5. The commission proposed that that New York also impose garbage fees. New York has not yet adopted the idea.

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