Public Hearing to Consider Introduction of Ordinance Revising the City’s Sewer Service Charges. (Public Works 602)
66. E public hearing to consider introduction of ordinance revising the city's sewer service charge. Okay. Six E. Yo. And this is the staff's report. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Honorable Vice Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Aaron Smith from the Public Works Department. Tonight is a public hearing for a proposed sewer service charge increase of 3% annually for the next five years. I'd like to start with a little bit of history before getting into the specifics of tonight's hearing. Back in February of this year, Council adopted a resolution stating city's intent to revise the sewer service charge based on a report conducted by Bartle and Wells Associates. That rate study is an exhibit to the agenda item tonight. Please note that since February the report has been updated based on council feedback. The figure for which compares sewer service charges across the East Bay collection system agencies was updated to now more appropriately compare the proposed Alameda rates to the current city of Piedmont rate for parcel sized 5000 square feet or less. Otherwise, no other changes have been made to the report since February. Thank you. The sewer rate study was tasked with evaluating the sewer program's funding needs and revenue sources in light of the federal consent decree that we will operate under for the next 22 years. Based on the evaluation, the report recommends a drawing down the sewer fund reserves, which are currently higher than recommended levels and a phasing in of a 3% annual increase over over the next five years. This approach allows the city to maintain the recommended reserve levels, meet expenditure needs and avoid any steep rate increases for the duration of the consent decree. Procedures for amending the sewer service charged are contained in specific provisions of the California Constitution, more commonly spoke of as Proposition 218. So following Council's resolution in February, city staff mailed out a notice to property owners informing them of the proposed rate increase tonight's public hearing and protest procedures. That notice is also an exhibit to your agenda item this evening. 9 million protests have been received by the city clerk in advance of the hearing tonight. No written protests have been received this evening. State law requires council to hear and consider all public comments received this evening, but that only written protests are considered in determining a majority protest. Without a majority protest, a majority vote by council tonight can approve the proposed rate increases. The staff report before you tonight contains a typographical errors, saying that a 4/5 vote by council is required. That's not the case. Following tonight's. Speakers visit. Simple majority. A simple majority. Thank you. Yes. Following tonight's speakers, I will return to the podium to state on record whether the majority protest was received, thereby closing the public hearing. I am available for questions now and following any of our speakers this evening. Thank you. We have one. Speaker. Ra Alvarado. I lied. Ami the highlight of our meeting. We thought we'd let you go home earlier. God bless you. You don't know how happy I was when Mr. Otis suggested the move of the agenda item. Rob Righto. Park Street Business Association. You probably didn't think I was going to show up on this one tonight. And this is not so. Much a protest to the rate increase outlined in this. Publication sent out. What I'm here this evening is to convey a concern of many of my members and many property owners in the downtown area. And that concern is. The flow rates that are being provided to the city of Alameda by East Bay mud. Many of my members believe. That the data. That the city of Alameda is receiving is inaccurate. I have one member's for four years of. Property taxes here. It's a business who the owner believes that. Their water usage has been. Fairly consistent. Over those four. Years and their sewer service was 3120. 840 770 300. More than double in four years. And this business. Owner assures me that their water flow has not doubled in those four years. And they're very concerned about that. As I said, I'm not here. To protest. The rate increases. But what I am here this evening to do is to ask the council. To instruct your overworked staff. I'm sorry. To check into the. Methodology of how this water flow from East Bay mud is being conveyed to the city of Alameda. It's a very it's obviously a big concern. And as you can well imagine, when you're a business or property owner paying, you know, these kind of fees when they just there just doesn't seem to be. Any rhyme or reason. And the property owners and business owners would like some sort of documentation because they're not receiving any now of how the flow rates are being assessed. And is the methodology and is the way that they're determined, you know, in incorrect. One other item they wanted me to point out this evening, rightly so. Again, back to this publication. The property owners and business owners that I represent would have appreciated a chart that showed what the commercial rates. In various city. What was ah, excuse me. What they are. As opposed to. Just the residential rates. It's a minor point, but. Frankly we had the same problem with the garbage rates. Also, there was an emphasis on residential and not on commercial. Thank you. Thank you. He was our final speaker on that item first. So in conclusion, nine written protests have been received. Therefore, a majority protest has not been received. So again, I'm available for questions. If not, we can. Move over Ashcroft. Thank you, Mary Spencer. So, Miss Smith, nice job on your report and presentation, as always. Can you tell us. Is. I think when we talked about comparing commercial rates across other cities, the response was that that's difficult to do because the types of businesses vary so much. Is that do you know if that's all businesses? I don't know if it's necessarily types of businesses. We do volumetric is volumetric rates for our commercial accounts. Explain what that is for. So our residential rates are based. It's essentially a flat rate that's based upon an assumed water use. Residential is tend to be more homogenous in terms of their water use. So to avoid the administrative burden of monthly water usage rate and assessment of sewer fees, it's a very common practice among municipalities to do a flat rate for residential that's on an assumed amount of water usage. Commercial, on the other hand, is volumetric. So there's a flat charge for having the sewer service charge. And then for each 730 cubic feet above and beyond that, there's an additional charge. So we could compare. Land use type two, land use type to get a sense it would be very average, certainly not impossible to do. Thank you. I. And I was just going to add that. Yeah. Wrong one. Sorry. And the reason and just so the public I know we've all read our materials, which is the public understands why is it that our rates are going up? What are we what are we going to do with those increased rates? Sure. So we entered into a federal consent decree this September 2014 that codifies the requirements for our sewer program. Some of those are operational in nature, so we will be cleaning our sewers more routinely condition assessing our our sewers more routinely doing what we would call spot repairs, emergency type service requests more routinely. We also are prescribed an annual replacement rate of our sewers. We have aged lots of clay sewers that require renewal. Will we be doing about three miles per year of replacement? That's a defined cost. We also have 34 pump stations that are on the island, including the base, which is a different funding source that need to be updated and renovated to current standards. Thank you. Thank you. And a question to comment. We have a motion. To move introduction of the ordinance, revising the sewer service charges outlined in the report. Second, we'll let Mr. Desai. And Ken Staff follow up on the Speaker's comments. Well, thank you. All those in favor of. High. Emotion passes unanimously. Thank you. Now around 6060. Recommendation toward a contract in the amount of 7.9 million, including contingencies to Alton construction for construction of the Emergency Operation Center and Fire Station three and appropriate anticipated loan proceeds from II bank an appropriate 23 A and B tax allocation unspent bond proceeds.