LAKEPORT — The Lakeport City Council unanimously decided to continue its discussion on water and sewer rate increases until its next meeting after receiving far fewer written protests than needed to automatically reject the proposal Tuesday.
“That would give us the opportunity to consider everything that we”ve heard and look at, again, every last alternative,” Mayor Stacey Mattina said Tuesday evening at Lakeport City Hall.
The issue will be taken up Oct. 2.
The decision to postpone came after council members listened to more than two dozen people speak in opposition to the proposal, which would phase in increases during the next three-plus years.
Approximately 100 people attended the public hearing, but many trickled out of the council chambers during the course of the nearly three-hour conversation.
The opponents expressed a range of concerns, including for potential impacts on low-income residents, retirees on a fixed-income, businesses and people who maintain lawns and gardens.
“You”re going to kill households,” resident Bob Bridges said.
The city received 356 valid protests by 5 p.m. Tuesday and an estimated 350 to 400 unverified protests between that time and the close of the public hearing, which was the protest deadline. Each city parcel was allowed one protest.
Had the city received 1,215 valid protests (representing a majority of parcels), the rate proposal would have been automatically rejected.
As currently recommended, the new water rate structure would nearly double the flat-rate service fees for residential customers by January 2016 and create a new tiered system for charges based on water consumption.
The proposed water hikes would also affect commercial customers and those with duplexes, mobile homes, apartments and motels.
On the sewer side, residential customers in the north part of the city would see their flat rate more than double by January 2016. The charge for southern residents would increase by almost 60 percent during that time.
Residents do not pay a consumption charge for sewer. The sewer rate changes would impact apartments and commercial buildings.
The new rates would take effect at the time of council approval. The city would implement subsequent increases at the beginning of 2014, 2015 and 2016.
“I”m concerned about how fast the water rate increase is,” opponent Keith Kirsch said.
Water and sewer revenues have gone down while costs have risen, resulting in delayed infrastructure improvement projects, Public Works Director Mark Brannigan said.
“It would be nice to know that we had a system that wasn”t going to fail, we weren”t going to be paying fines and we knew it was going to keep working for awhile,” Mattina said. “So, why didn”t we do this in the past to plan for the future? Well, nobody wanted to raise the rates.”
The money generated by the increases would go toward funding operations, building reserves, saving for capital improvements and helping secure a U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development grant and low-interest long-term loan, which the city applied for this year, Brannigan said.
“Without the adequate rates in place, we won”t qualify for the financing or the potential grant,” he said.
The federal dollars would help fund 10 proposed water and sewer projects, but Bridges and others questioned the need for some of those improvements, including the replacement of water meters and the controversial south-city water main loop.
“You folks need to go back to the drawing boards and really do what you need to do and throw out the stuff you don”t need to do,” Bridges said.
Some people who spoke during the meeting asked the council for more time to gather protests. A couple attendees said neither they nor their tenants were notified of the hearing.
City staff said legal notices were mailed to each property owner as well as each person who receives a utility bill. The notification was also available on the city website.
Council members could approve rates lower than the amounts outlined in the legal notices, but if they wanted to implement higher rates, the city would have to start the hearing process over, City Attorney Steven Brookes said.
“Everything you said tonight, I hear you,” Councilman Bob Rumfelt said to citizens at the meeting. “But what a lot of you folks don”t understand is this problem has been going on for a long time, and it”s getting to where we can”t control it and we need more money.”
For general information about the rate proposal, call 263-3578 or visit www.cityoflakeport.com.
Note: A previous version of this article listed an incorrect number of protests received by the city. Lake County Publishing regrets the error.
