Water Rate Increase Meeting Next Tuesday

The Suisun-Solano Water Authority is looking to vote on proposed rate increases as early as Tuesday, Nov. 22. The increase will raise the amount ratepayers are charged for usage overall, and redistribute rates for nonresidential customers to make them more proportionate to actual usage.

The proposal comes after an adjustment was made to increase rates by as much as 12 percent in two years. The board is now considering raising rates by 8 percent.

“We’ve lowered the rates just enough to basically pay bills and keep 25 percent reserve for a rainy day emergency,” said Sam Derting, SSWA and City Council member.

According to a letter sent to ratepayers by SSWA, the water rate increase would cover costs for ongoing operations and maintenance; construction, upgrade, repair and maintenance of water systems facilities; long-term debt obligations; acquisitions of materials and supplies; and maintenance
of adequate reserves.

Reserves would be held to cover maintenance and repair water treatment facilities such as that on Waterman Boulevard in Fairfield. The rates would be set to increase in two phases over the next two years, raising them by about 4 percent each year.  

“It’s a reserve for replacing aging equipment and upgrades for a water plant they have up on the hill,” Derting said.

Derting said earlier in the year, the Solano Irrigation District presented the water authority with the proposal for a 12 percent rate increase. The increase would have set up a 50 percent reserve for repair and replacement of equipment. The water authority requested a comparison be made to other water authorities in the state and finally settled on the current proposal, which includes setting up a 25 percent reserve for maintenance.

“We’d seen that the reserve was quite high and we told them they would have to go back and do some more studies and lower the reserve,” Derting said.

The amount business owners would pay would increase at a higher rate than that of residential customers. In the past nonresidential ratepayers would pay for water meters, which covered a portion of the amount they were responsible for paying per unit of water usage. With the current plan a
redistribution of rates would include an increase in meter charges, as well as an increase in the price per unit.

“So what will happen is in the first year, the water that you get included in the base charge will go away, you’ll get a meter charge and you’ll pay whatever amount of water that you’ll use,” said Mark Joseph, Financial Services Manager. “And then in a second year, the rate for that water will be adjusted up to be closer to the average water cost.”

Joseph said for two years now the water authority has been able to plan without an increase, mostly by making cuts to the city’s budget and using water authority cash reserves. Now that city budgets are getting leaner and less money is available by way of reserves, it is important to help protect water systems by raising the rates, he said.

“We may be able to continue operations by cutting back and making due but as for some of the major multi-million dollar capital projects, that’s where we’re not going to have money to operate,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the meeting on Nov. 22 is officially called a protest hearing. Anyone who wishes to protest the proposed increases can either attend the meeting, email, or send him a letter stating their name, address, and that they are against the increase. SSWA services approximately 8000 customers, so a slight majority of just over 4000 ratepayers would be needed to stop the board from approving the increase.

Joseph said so far he has only received word from about a half a dozen ratepayers formally submitting their protest to the proposal. Joseph said if a majority protested, the board would have to go back to the drawing board to come up with a plan ratepayers would agree with.

 “If the concerns are the rates are too high, hopefully they can also comment on where we can cut to make ends meet,” he said. “In a nutshell we’ve tried to listen to some of the concerns and tried to craft a response and a new set of rates and a new set of water studies that reflect that but hopefully it won’t go to that.”

The Nov. 22 meeting will be held at 6:00 p.m. at the Suisun City Council Chambers at , 701 Civic Center Boulevard.

For more information about the hearing, or to submit an official protest, contact the SSWA Billing Office at 707-421-7326 or email Mark Joseph at mjoseph@suisun.com.