Counter claims on initiative
Milpitas
City Attorney Christopher Diaz told the council members that in his
opinion the water rate initiative was illegal and the city could be sued if the
initiative went into effect. Mr. Diaz is the new attorney and has
limited knowledge of the history of Milpitas violations of
proposition 218. This are the facts about in the water rate
proposition with tired rates.
Attorney
made a big deal about the lowest tier not covering the cost to
purchase water which means that tier 1 would be subsidized by other
tiers:
There
are two subsidizes that the city is using now.
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The city is forcing the residents that do not receive irrigation water to subsidize the parcels that do receive irrigation water by transferring the $10 million dollars for the construction of three wells on the residents that are not going to receive irrigation water.
2. Regarding the sewage rate
fees, the residents that are below the average on people per
household and/or average gallons per day are subsidizing the
residents that are above the average people per household or water
consumed. This means a resident could be paying as much as $90/HCF
for sewage. If the resident is using 10 HCF with the flat rate fee of
$90 dollars the cost is $9.00/HCF above the city cost of $6.15. This
is a definite violation prop 218 and is ignored by the attorney and
all city council members.
Attorney
claimed the initiative could be illegal because the initiative did
not provide the basis for how the rates were determined:
The city has not provide the
bases for how its fees were determined in the written notices sent to
the public for any utility service for that last 16 years. I have
always asked the city to do so but get ignored all the time. The city
did not disclose the existence of a bond, the cost of the bond or how
the $1.30 potable service charge was calculated as required by
proposition 218.
The
Attorney claimed that there was not a public hearing on the rates.
The city discussed the
initiative at 3 public meetings the last meeting was Aug 2. I was
limited to 3 minutes but city attorney and employees could discuss
the issue without any time limit and I was not allowed to present by
spreadsheet on the viewer so the public could see my calculations on
revenue received by the city. I showed a profit of $1.5 million over
the city’s plan using the $4.75 cost for water.
Attorney
claimed that city would have to sue the proponents and city clerk: On
what grounds could the city sue? Obtaining an initiative is not
against the law, and the city’s attorney even participated in the
initiative. The initiative is a right of the public and allowed in
California election code. All election codes was followed, there is
nothing illegal about the petition’s rate structure. The city used
the sue ploy to get the council members to vote against the
initiative from going on the ballot in November and it worked.
The
city of San Juan Capistrano was charging more money than needed to
provide the infrastructure a violation of prop 218. Prop 218 states
that you cannot overcharge for the service. There is nothing about
undercharging. The city can use general fund money if necessary to
provide infrastructure. The city is taking $2.4 million out of the
water fund for services to go into the general fund. The city can use
general fund money if needed to provide more of the infrastructure.
The general fund is paying the city’s water costs so it perfectly
legal to use general fund money for the water infrastructure to fix
the leaking pipe problem instead of passing on the $2.4 million
dollar cost of lost potable water on the water fees.
If leaking pipe losses was
paid for from the general fun, the city would take the problem
seriously and would be a high priority to fix the leaking pipes, but
would rather spend resident’s money on wells which saves the
general fund money instead. The Urban water management reports lost
due to leaking pipes today is 374 thousand HCF units and in 4 years
it will be 485 thousand units a 30% increase that will be passed on
to the residents. Today about 750,000 gallons of water is lost each
day. See report at
http://www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Adopted-2015-Milpitas-UWMP-Revised-6-27-16.pdf
The
city’s water plan was designed to transfer as much costs to the
residents as possible and reduce the city’s costs in the process.
So the residents are subsidizing the city and all parcels that use
irrigation water when the city and other parcel owners could pay for
their own irrigation water, but city chose not to do so and violated
election code by not allowing the ballot to be voted on by the
public. The city should obey proposition 218 themselves and stop the
double standards.
Mayor candidates Carmen Montano and Debbie Giordano
voted for you to subsidizing others for irrigation water and both are
running for the Mayor position. Both are ignoring city’s violations
of proposition 218.
The
city’s claims against the initiative were baseless, but worked in
stopping the initiative from going on the November ballot.
Questions
contact marini4mayor@yahoo.com
