 |
 |
By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Water and sewer rates will go up about 3 percent per year for the next two years after the Santa Rosa City Council reluctantly approved the latest in a decade-long series of rate increases.
The increases mean that by 2013, the average single-family home occupants in Santa Rosa will be paying 116 percent more for water and sewer service than they were a decade earlier.
All council members expressed regret at the increases, but said the city Board of Public Utilities has made its case that the increases were need to boost reserves, stabilize revenues and continue to upgrade the city’s network of water pipes and treatment plants.
“It is with regret but the feeling of necessity that I will approve the rate increase,” Councilman John Sawyer said.
The council voted 6-1, with Gary Wysocky voting against the increases. He said he was concerned that city residents are paying higher rates than neighboring cities, most of which operate under many of the same environmental regulations cited as driving the increases.
Some residents expressed outrage not only that rates were rising, but that the ratepayers who use the least water would be seeing a higher percentage increase than high-volume water users.
By 2013, those customers using a mere 1,000 per month, will face an 11.4 percent increase in their combined water and sewer bills, while the large-volume customers, those using 22,000 gallons a month in the summer, will see a 5.6 percent increase.
That’s largely because the fixed-amount portion of the rate is going up sharply — 18 percent in 2012 and another 15 percent in 2013. While the increases are relatively small, just $1.50 next year and another $1.50 the following year, many residents seized on the disparity as a sign of inequity.
Resident Gerald Niimi said enacting higher increases on the lowest-volume users “regressive and so arrogant.”
“It may be legal but I think it’s morally wrong,” Niimi said.
City staff and members of the Board of Public Utilities made a lengthy presentation that explained the myriad reasons why the increases were needed. They said they worked hard to balance the needs keeping the system running with the board’s strong desire to limit increases on ratepayers.
They stressed that the increases are modest compared to the 9 percent increases that have persisted for the past eight years.
“We believe these rates minimize the impact to our ratepayers during very difficult times while maintaining the integrity of our water and wastewater system,” BPU vice chairman Stephen Gale told the council.
The city received 162 written protests to the rate increases, but 24,000 people would have needed to file protests to block them.
Some of the residents who opposed the increases were very upset.
Mike Crozier said he’s done everything he can think of to lower his water and sewer bills, even taken some measures that he was embarrassed to mention,.
“Why can’t I flush my toilet? I can’t afford it!” Crozier said.
Occupy Santa Rosa protestor Ron Keating held up an empty wallet for the council to see. He said he’s broke after paying his bills and that many people he knows in the community are suffering.
“They have no way to take on this additional burden,” Keating said.
DJ Phimister, a construction manager who lives in southwest Santa Rosa, said most ratepayers look at the history of increases and see no end in sight.
“I think part of the issue here is people just don’t trust government anymore,” Phimister said.
The average homeowner, defined as someone using 5,000 gallons a month in winter and 12,000 gallons in the summer months, will see the combined water and sewer bill go up about $144 per month now to $153 in 2013, a 6.4 percent increase.
In 2003, that average bill was $70.95.
Council members said they sympathize with the unhappy rate payers. Scott Bartley said of his bill, ‘I gasp every time I see it.”
But most council members agreed that the BPU was taking a modest, prudent action, and that it was wise to continue regularly replacing aging pipe to prevent the kinds of accidents that often occur in cities that neglect their infrastructure.
“We would do a huge disservice to our community if we didn’t look at the repair and replacement of those pipes under the ground,” Susan Gorin said.
Subscribe by Email
Follow us on Twitter
Paying Attention,
The water bill increases are due to government greed, not corporate greed.
As brown act jack says below, the Sonoma County Water Agency Board is wasting millions of $$ on the anthropological global warming fraud. The Agency’s purpose is to provide Sonoma County with safe, quality water, not to tilt windmills (which used to be a reference to Don Quixote but now refers to 400 foot tall windmills that chop up birds).
I think we have gotten to a place where we the people need to demand transparency. Each mont and each increase the itemized money transactions should be available for public viewing.
We are supporting these people, so we need to see the check-book.
This is just another one of those areas where corporate greed is taking place.
@ didya notice
The City only hires folks with their own leftist big gubmnt agenda?”
That statement makes me really angry and I can tell you that is SO NOT TRUE.
I am on a well, so my water is cheap. It must cost a fortune now to pay the City water bill to grow your own food.
Ohh, I forgot, Monsanto should grow all of our food, like the school lunch programs.
The Progressives in bed with the Right-wing corporate interests, thanks BOTH sides.
Until we drop ICLEI they will incrementally increase regulations,
utilities, fees, taxes, planning and zoning shananigans.
Especially anything having to do with real estate/home ownership, small business ownership, and automobile ownership.
Public input, common sense, none of that matters to them.
They are literally accountable to ICLEI.
@ GAJ
Not to worry I did not fall for that. I changed the landscape on my own because I wanted to try and save money. Look what that got me HA!
The City Council, as is usual in these types of things, forgot to set up a reserve for the replacement of utilities, did they not?
But, when you have board members to agree to everything, what more can you expect.
they take our water rate payments and send it to the general fund to pay for various things that the city asys they should have to pay for
they take water and sewer rate payments and pay for Green house gas reductioon, solar power, and green programs to weatherize houses and buildings.
SCWA spent $11,000,000 dollars on solar power to save about $4,500,000, and thought it was a good deal.
Interconnections between business and public utilities seems to be growing to create jobs.
The City only hires folks with their own leftist big gubmnt agenda? The County of Sonoma is pretty much the same but more nepotism to the point of mass incompetance has occurred!
Can anyone cite me a time when the council refused to give an increase to one of the city departments?
As I have stated on another article, the City couldn’t care less what you think. How the rate payer feels means nothing to the council or the city departments.
If you really want them to listen then recall several of them. Nothing else will make them listen.
Liz, I hope you didn’t fall for the Santa Rosa City program that helped you pay to relandscape for low water use and rip out your lawn.
They lower your baseline as a result of signing up for that “assistance” which is why we did it without their “help.”
Nice little “gotcha” there.
Liz,
You apparently noticed what the government does not wish people to notice !
They pretend as if they listen to voters because they cannot escape the requirement to meet in public.
Otherwise, they don’t care about anything that the voters say. Everything they do is geared toward expanding their power base to keep themselves in a job.
Where is the exact information that explains their justification for raising rates upon consumers ? Higher public employee pension costs are one unmentioned reason.
We need to find a way to force government to explain itself far in advance rather than this BS where they are allowed to merely tell us what they plan to do.
What’s the point of even talking to the city council any more??? 162 write in and a dozen speak out, and I can tell you hundreds and hundreds more would have if they did not have to work to pay the bills they can barley afford.
We do what you ask of us and conserve water and then we get punished each year by having to pay more. How does that make any sense?????
I took out lawn and I cut back my water usage in half and now I am paying more money for less water, it’s insane. I’ll take my lawn back thank you very much.
Just shows us again that the city council does not care about what the residents have to say, and that they just do what they please.
Why should we come and speak when you just rubber stamp things anyways.
“Water and sewer rates will go up about 3 percent per year for the next two years after the Santa Rosa City Council reluctantly approved the latest in a decade-long series of rate increases”.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to read that some government council or agency somewhere said that reluctantly they were NOT approving more taxes or charges at this time given the economic conditions facing much of the public?
Amazing how we have to prepare and live within our means…but NOOOOO to the government. Then Gorin says well we have to pay for the pipes under the ground…and why is that Susan? Oh yeah, because you spent all the money on special programs and didn’t allocate TAXES for the infrastructure. Vote the pigs out!