By James LEE

This is the first of what I anticipate to be regular letters to the community regarding the goings on at your public water and wastewater utility.

To begin, at Tuesday night’s meeting the District board of directors made perhaps the most difficult decision this or past boards have had to make. But before we talk about that, let’s look at the purpose of the agency. Although the District is a governmental agency that does not turn a profit, it is a business. We are in the business of providing water, the basic building block to life (and the ability to flush it away once used).

The same reason we don’t have life on Mars (that we know of) is the reason that water availability is what paved the way for life out West. As recently as the 1940s and 1950s, this was keenly understood. In today’s fast-paced and high-tech world, it’s easy for us to lose sight of the absolute criticality of water. I sometimes take it for granted. too, and I manage a water utility.

That doesn’t change the fact that our implicit and explicit obligation is to provide this community with safe, clean water that must reliably flow for health, safety and emergency services regardless of any circumstance. There is no option for failure and, as the manager of your public utility, I am obligated to promise you that the District will always prepare resiliency measures and backup plans, that we will monitor the real-time changes across the operational and regulatory landscapes, that we will always be planning well into the future and that we have processes in place for the next generations of managers once this generation of public servants have moved on.

The Board’s decision Tuesday night was to place a charge on the property roll for homeowners. The charge, which was originally proposed at $404 for the majority of homeowners, was designated for replacing the backbone of your infrastructure: pipelines. This is a tough, tough decision for the board to make whose members pay the same bills you do, who are elected by you (and can be elected out), and who have to answer to you beyond a public meeting or two, whether at the local grocery store, church or school.

After a series of outreach efforts through mailers, mass emails, ads in the papers, several town hall meetings (see it on YouTube, I’m famous!) and announcements at local associations, the board listened to the community at a public hearing on the matter a couple of weeks ago. After careful deliberations over the subsequent weeks, the board met again last night to make a decision. I believe they legitimately heard the community’s concerns and ideas and acted in the best interests of everyone, in several concrete ways:

1. The proposed charge of $404 for most homeowners (those who have 3/4” meters) was lowered to $194, less than half of what was proposed;
2. A commitment was made to the consistent use of bonds. Bonds mitigate the immediate impact to the current generation of users by stretching the financial commitment over time. It also promotes equity as each generation pays for its share of use of the system. There is a double benefit, because implementing a charge on the property roll raises the District’s credit profile, likely lowering the cost of borrowing and further stretching your dollars while getting ahead of inflation;
3. The current low-income program will be expanded to a bill assistance program that: 1) increases the budget for the program; 2) increases the income limits for qualification; and 3) considers more than the 20% of assistance currently offered;
4. An exemption was implemented for property owners who prefer that the charge be on their utility bill rather than their property tax bill.

Times are tough and because of forces beyond all of our control, whether climate change or an ever-globalized economy, things likely will only get tougher and the cost of business for all of us will only go up. As the board’s governance of the public outreach and input process demonstrates, your voice matters and I believe the only way for all of us to succeed is to work together. A key ingredient in that partnership is going to have to be creativity.

On Tuesday night, someone called the District out for whether we’re meeting our vision statement of “Secure sustainable water supplies and ensure infrastructure reliability, while furthering our commitment to accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness.” I believe we’re doing everything within our means including regular outreach to the community, posting a mountain of information on our website, reducing full-time staff by more than 20%, and bringing more capabilities like construction management and inspection in-house to chase cost savings. But I also take that statement as a challenge to do better. Maybe that means more outreach to help understand what, how and why we do things. Maybe it just means doing better. I prefer to think it’s some combination and, again, I think the best and perhaps only way is to do it together.

I believe the two things within our control that we can promise each other are to establish and maintain respectful dialog and allow each other the opportunity to learn and evolve. I believe we got a good jumpstart following the meeting on Tuesday night when I was able to have conversations with those who had spoken about the capital charge, including some the most prominent members and supporters of the community. We brainstormed how the District could establish a more effective dialog; one action item is to establish a quarterly open forum for Q&A. Maybe we could host at the library and I would count it a success whether one person or all 36,000 residents showed up (might have to check the library’s fire code to accommodate them all).

Another action item I proposed Tuesday night was to provide an annual report. The District is already audited annually by independent auditors but the purpose of an annual report would be to report on operational particulars, including how the funds established on Tuesday night are being deployed and how the long-term plan is going.

I’ll stop here for now. Thank you to those who took time out of their evenings Tuesday night to attend and speak. That makes us stronger. The purpose of this public utility is to serve you and this dialog means that you get an agency that best and most appropriately serves you.