Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson pulled back Tuesday on her request to hike the city's monthly trash fee but still wants Toledoans to pay more than they are now.

The mayor said months ago that the city budget required increasing the monthly trash fee from $8.95 to $15 for most households and from $5 to $8.50 for senior citizens with homestead exemptions.

She reduced those figures slightly to $11.50 for most households and $6.50 for senior citizens with homestead exemptions.

“We looked at the number of households and the cost of the service and right now we are not going to make that complete [price] jump,” Mayor Hicks-Hudson said.

That reduction — and the fact that the fee increase was not in place Jan. 1 — means the 2016 general fund budget as proposed in November will fall short, the mayor acknowledged. To fix the problem, Mayor Hicks-Hudson said she would present “allowances” during a city council committee hearing Thursday. She offered no hint as to how the shortfall would be resolved but promised there would no city employee layoffs.

The city expects to collect $11.27 million from the trash fee if it is increased as proposed on April 1.

That would leave about $4 million that must be taken from the city’s general fund to fill the gap.

“The $15 and $8.50 fee was to make it basically an enterprise fund — to make it self- sustaining,”Toledo Public Service Director Bill Franklin said. “We could still phase that in.”

City Finance Director George Sarantou said the originally proposed fee increase would have raised annual revenue from $8.8 million in 2015 to $13.2 million in this year. With the fee now projected to generate only $11.27 million, the general fund is at least $1.93 million out of balance.

Councilmen during a committee hearing Tuesday lauded the mayor’s decision to reduce the proposed increase — which still needs council approval along with the 2016 budget before the March 31 city charter-mandated deadline.

“In terms of the original budget that was proposed in November, the trash fee increase was pretty significant,” said Council President Steven Steel. “I think it is great that the administration has heard our pleas and the pleas of the citizens of Toledo.”

Mr. Franklin said the city pays $15.2 million for the entire trash and recycling operation.

That includes paying $9.27 million annually for refuse and recyclable material collection; $4.36 million for landfill operations and capital costs; $1.08 million to hire a company to process Toledoans’ recyclable material, and $550,000 for administrative expenses.

The city now pays $40,000 a month for the service. That will soon jump to $90,000 — more than $1 million a year.

David Welch, commissioner of the streets, bridges, and harbor division, said Toledo will be hammered by a weak commodities market for items such as recyclable metal, plastic, and paper.

Also, Toledo pays more than other cities because of its “single stream” recycling, which allows people to dump all kinds of recycling in a single container rather than separating glass, paper, and metal, for example.

Nineteen percent of Toledo's recycling loads are contaminated with trash that people improperly put in the wrong containers, which also increases the cost, Mr. Welch said.

Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171 or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.

First Published March 23, 2016, 4:00 a.m.