Bolstered by a scathing civil grand jury report, Oakland landlords plan to file a lawsuit Wednesday claiming that the city’s $1.5 billion garbage collection deal has led to skyrocketing trash and recycling rates that far exceed the actual cost of the service.

“Enough is enough,” said Wayne Rowland, president of the East Bay Rental Housing Association, whose 1,200 members manage or own more than 20,000 apartments, condos and duplexes, largely in Oakland.

Under the city’s 2014 trash contract — which several council members have said they did not read closely before voting to approve it — many apartment owners have seen their garbage and recycling rates increase by upward of 150 percent.

The rates are about to go up again in July by at least another 20 percent, Rowland said. Landlords are bearing the brunt of the increases, but not all of them — under the law, they can pass along some of the higher costs to tenants.

Two years ago, Oakland staffers and consultants recommended retaining the city’s longtime garbage hauler, Waste Management. Instead, the City Council gave the deal to newcomer California Waste Solutions. When Waste Management filed a lawsuit, the council went behind closed doors and put together a deal letting the two competitors split the operations.

To shift some of the costs from homeowners, the city structured the contract to put more of the expense on landlords, restaurants and other businesses, including nonprofits.

When those customers started complaining about skyrocketing bills, the council amended the rates to bring down the charges for restaurant recycling. Now the city faces a new threat — this one aimed at the 30 percent franchise fee Oakland gets as part of the deal, which supplies $30 million a year for city coffers.

According to attorney Andrew Zacks, whose lawsuit on behalf of the housing association lists three small landlords as plaintiffs, “Under California law, fees for property-related services like garbage collection are not to exceed what is required to provide the actual service.”

If they do, he said, they are considered a tax and must be approved by voters.

Franchise fees such as Oakland’s are common municipal money-raisers in California. However, the Alameda County civil grand jury recently blasted Oakland’s 30 percent take as “disproportionately” higher than those of surrounding cities.

Alameda’s franchise fee on garbage collection is 10 percent. Berkeley has a 20 percent fee, but only for businesses.

The grand jury added that it was troubling that Oakland’s City Council held its franchise-fee discussions behind closed doors during the garbage-contract talks.

Mayor Libby Schaaf, who was on the council when the contract was approved, defended the franchise fee, saying it helps pay for dealing with such problems as illegal dumping.

She added that the city “continues to evaluate aspects of the program that can be improved to better serve the public.”

Off the wall: A new set of neighbors of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are upset that a new fortress is in the works — only this time it’s on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where the couple are building a wall along their 700-acre spread.

It was less than two years ago that all the construction work and round-the-clock security at the $10 million “fixer-upper” that the Facebook tycoon and his philanthropist-pediatrician wife purchased in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores area had some neighbors feeling under siege.

Now, according to the Kauai newspaper the Garden Island, some neighbors are griping that the 6-foot-tall stone wall that the couple have erected along a half-mile stretch of their vacation getaway blocks ocean views — and, believe it or not, impedes cooling breezes that roll off the sea.

Neighbor and self-described “public access advocate” Richard Spacer tells us he’s even more upset that crews hired by the couple are felling trees along what he says is a historic public trail that cuts through their property and runs a couple of hundred yards off the beach. That makes the trail unusable, he said.

“To me, it’s illegal,” Spacer said. “You can’t block access with walls and security guards,” he said, adding that the couple’s representatives have even “denied that the trail exists.”

A spokeswoman for the couple’s project said the team doing the work “is complying with all permitting processes and state and local regulations, and is committed to ensuring that any plans respect the local environment and are considerate of neighbors.”

As for that half-mile-long rock wall?

“Rock walls like this one along the roadway are routinely used as sound barriers to reduce highway and road noise,” the spokeswoman said.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross