Tomorrow night city council will revisit the sewer rate increase. I read the report, available here
Here’s the problem – developers don’t want to pay their own way, they want existing neighborhoods to be stuck for their cost of providing whole new parts of town with sewer lines. Read this excerpt.
Sanitary Sewer Master Plan (SSMP) identifies all projects necessary to support buildout of the City per
the General Plan. If new development occurs and a new pipeline is installed to serve only that
development, then that financial responsibility is completely put on the new development. However, when a new development occurs that relies partially on existing sewer mains that do not have sufficient capacity, then that sewer main needs to be upsized. When this occurs, the existing users benefit from a brand-new pipe and are therefore responsible for a portion of the newly installed pipe cost. This is deemed “Sanitary Sewer Master Plan Projects – Existing User Contribution”.
So, when a developer wants to flop a new subdivision in your neighborhood, and the sewer main has to be upsized to provide for that new subdivision, existing users have to pay for it? Even though it would not have been necessary if not for that subdivision? Wow, a brand new pipe! For that they wanted to raise sewer rates by 150%. For developers.
But they hit the beehive with a stick this time – finally. People who threw the mailed ballot assessment that changed us to a “volumetric” rate base came out of the wood work to bitch about this new increase. So staff came up with some new suggestions. They admitted that they based that rate increase on the “assumption… that buildout will occur over the next 20 years.” Assumptions, assumptions – always making asses out of you and me! After the tar and feathers committee came out of nowhere they offer to “extend” their assumption to 40 years or just have it “removed completely”.
My dad would say, they just pulled that rate increase figure out of their ass-umptions.
Our council and staff are afraid of developers. They threaten that if they can’t get us to pay they will have to issue bonds (another way of getting us to pay).
If no fees are collected for this purpose, the risk is that a developer will propose a new development with
their share of sewer costs, and the City will not have funds available to support the existing user
contribution. In this case, the City could reimburse the developer or pursue debt financing to provide the
City’s existing user share of costs.
That original sewer rate proposal was their way of getting existing users to pay forward for years and years of development. We’re not paying the real cost of delivering our own water, or carrying away our sewage – we’re paying for the next wave of overdevelopment.
Chico Taxpayers Association 