San Diego city councilmembers join forces to stall a proposed rate increase even though city staff warn too much delay could risk staff layoffs or falling behind on debt repayments.
Mayor Todd Gloria didn’t have the votes on Tuesday to pass the huge water and wastewater rate increase needed to avoid layoffs at the city’s Public Utilities Department. Councilmembers voted 8 to 1 to push the decision on a 63 percent water and 31 percent wastewater vote to Oct. 28. Councilmember Vivian Moreno voted no.
The mayor will need at least five to pass the rates by that date or risk layoffs at the Public Utilities Department or default on loans. In the meantime, councilmembers want to see the mayor’s staff find a way to save San Diegans money on their water bills.
He’s got a lot of work to do. Councilmembers were pretty blunt about their feelings.
“The rates will not go up another 62 percent. This is a non-starter. This is dead on arrival,” said Councilmember Stephen Whitburn who represents District 3. “Let’s go back and get this number down. I want to see the absolute lowest possible number that protects our workers and our residents.”
Weary of making decisions to raise fees this year on everything from parking to trash in the face of a structural budget deficit, Councilmember Kent Lee, District 6, said Gloria’s administration needs to rebuild trust with the public and his Council.
“It’s time city leadership own up to its responsibility to clearly communicate challenges the city faces rather than pass blame onto anyone else,” Lee said.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, District 9, wants Mayor Gloria to work with Council to remove some members he appointed to the San Diego County Water Authority that “undermine” residents’ best interests.
The mayor appoints 10 representatives to the governing board of the Water Authority, the agency that buys the region’s Colorado River water and operates a desalination plant. And it’s the ballooning costs of that water the city staff blames for the huge water rate increases of today.
“The city should have the strongest voice at the Water Authority… and we only have the strongest voice at the Water Authority if everyone we send there is actually speaking with the best interests of its residents,” Elo-Rivera said. “I’m continuously seeing that being undermined.”
One of Gloria’s appointees, Jim Madaffer, submitted an OpEd to Voice of San Diego the night before the water rate vote, pointing the finger away from the Water Authority and back at the city’s own project to recycle wastewater into drinking water for the rising costs.
City staff tried to deflect blame away from the recycling project, which the city has to do, and back at the Water Authority.
For Tim Douglass, president of AFSCME Local 127 which represents 650 Public Utilities city workers, warned this vote had higher financial stakes than any other the city’s yet made this rocky budget season. If the city doesn’t approve these water rates, he said, San Diego’s looking at growing a deficit of $9 million a month.
“The longer City Council kicks the cans down the road the more costly it is to the (Public Utilities Department) because it can’t continue to foot the bill,” said Andres Alva, the business representative for Local 127.
More Expensive Water Would Break Some San Diegans Financially
Widows on social security, a wheelchair bound woman on life support and college students turned out to protest higher water prices. In the face of rising rents, electricity bills, parking and now water, San Diegans expressed it’s getting harder and harder to live in this city.
Terri Altorelli said that the Council’s decision to postpone the vote was disappointing. She wanted the Council to vote no.
“My rent is 60 percent of my income already,” Altorelli said. “With the increase, I fear that it will push me into homelessness and that’s not where I want to end up.”
As Nika Morozova, a political science student at San Diego State University, walked up to the microphone to begin her public comment, rows of people from San Diego Workers Benefit Council stood up to support her.
Although they weren’t speaking with her, they made their shared frustrations known by holding up dozens of signs that read, “affordable water is a human right.”
“I have seen and been an advocate or many low-income families that get their electricity shut off, that are thousands of dollars behind in the water bill because they cannot afford the rates that they’re already paying — not even thinking about the 6 percent rate hike,” Morozova said.
