SPUSD board approves new
contracts and raises for top administrators
September 05, 2014
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
There will be another meeting of the city’s Ad Hoc Committee to address water, sewer and sewer surcharge rates to be held Wednesday September 10.
The meeting again will be at the Community Center, 530 W. Main St., starting at 6:30 p.m.
The session will not be televised for later broadcast but the last meeting drew more than 200 people to the Community Center to hear what city leaders have in store for escalating water, sewer and sewer surcharge rates, the latter two among the highest in the county.
The meeting at times turned contentious as members of the public sharply questioned issues related to sewer, sewer surcharge and water bills.
Interim Public Works Director Brian Yanez said there would be a Spanish translator present at the September 10 meeting.
Monthly sewer rates are now $77.21. In addition, residents pay $1.12 per 100 cubic feet of water used per month.
At the mid-August Ad Hoc meeting the city’s consultant noted that under the winterized model - a use calculation system approved by the council in 2008 but never implemented - sewage surcharges would be calculated based on how much water is used during the wetter winter months, when most water consumption is inside the home for needs that do require sewer processing.
Yanez told the council during a later overview of the mid-August meeting that city financial computer programs could only automatically go back one-year, right in the middle of what is now a severe three-year drought.
Any other research to calculate earlier utility bills he noted would have to be done manually.
Santa Paula’s water rates have gone from $17.82 a month during the 2009-10 fiscal year to $24.57 a month now for users with a 5/8 inch meter.
Several options would create tiers of usage - the more used the higher the bills - while raising basic rates for water and lowering the basic rate for sewer, which would see a higher surcharge for winter rate usage.
Although the $77.12 monthly base charge for the sewer was lowered to a proposed $75 and now the latest $60 base rate, the controversial surcharge is increased proportionately from $1.12 per HCF (748 gallons) to a base of $1.78 HCF, a cost that would rise water consumption included in the base winter rate that would apply year round.
Yanez said he anticipates the September 10 meeting is the last one before the new rate plan is taken to the council for possible adoption.
“I see this as finalizing rates to take back to council, it’s another step and hopefully that’s the goal,” but the issue would return to the public via a Prop. 218 so called protest vote before the new rates could be implemented in January 2015.
Mayor Rick Cook and Councilman Bob Gonzales have served on the Ad Hoc Committee, which before the August session had not met with the public since May 2013.
Cook has referred in the past to visits, meetings and contacts he and Gonzales had together and separately as Ad Hoc Committee members but Yanez said he did not know if the committee members would be presenting a report on their activities.
For more information call 933-4212, ext. 305.
