The City will hold a workshop on September 11 at 2 pm to discuss what new quarterly water rates will be should voters approve the November Referendum to return to quarterly billing. A quick review of why the City is reexamining water rates and billing is in order.
After 10 years of past Councils talking about the need to raise water rates but not acting, the City conducts a rate review and passes a Resolution in July 2023 increasing water rates and cutting in half our base allotment of water from 4,000 gallons per month to 2,000 gallons.
In March 2024 it was discovered that the City Manager failed to have the Council amend the quarterly meter reading and billing requirements of the existing Ordinance to allow for the new monthly meter read and billing schedule. The existing Ordinance only allowed meters to be read at intervals “90 days apart ” and “water service shall be billed on a quarterly basis “.
Passage of an amended City Ordinances in this instance to allow for monthly meter reading and billing is required before the July 2023 Resolution could be implemented.
For approximately 7 months until the Council finally passed the required Ordinance to remedy this oversight, the City without any authority to do so, billed monthly late fees and collected monthly surcharges from customers for using more than their new base allotment. The Mayor and Councilors in taking their oath of office swear to obey City Ordinances but in this instance have failed to acknowledge or take steps to remedy this mistake. Customers are entitled to credits on their water bills for those late fees and surcharges collected during this 7 month time period.
The eventual passage of the amending Ordinance in May 2024 by the Council to allow for monthly billing provided the opportunity for citizens to review and challenge these Council decisions through the Referendum process as guaranteed by the Oregon Constitution.
Citizens by now had experienced 7 months of monthly billings and the associated late charges and surcharges. 115 registered Manzanita voters were offered the opportunity to sign the Referendum petition to allow a vote to be taken on the Council’s decision. 114 signed with 1 declining because of the preference for monthly billing.
A closer review of the initial rate study revealed a flawed analysis of how the City came up with the new 2,000 gallon base water allotment that the City continues to rely upon. City staff admits that they have no way to distinguish monthly household water usage between full time residents and the majority part time homes that are not used for short term rentals in Manzanita that are vacant for weeks or months at a time. Staff simply combined all full and part time households and came up with the winter and summer average usage that they continue to cite for the “general homeowner”.
Additionally, questions as to why the visitors who are driving up demand for water especially during the summer are not paying their share towards the cost of that demand have simply been ignored. Rather than address these factual issues, the City and its Council supporters become indignant when citizens exercised their right to the Referendum process and decry the costs and time to reexamine the initial rate study.
How ironic it is that if only the City Manager had prepared and the Council had approved the necessary Ordinance changes when the rate change Resolution was passed in July 2023, there would not be the outcry and hand wringing by the City and its Council supporters because there would have been no opportunity for citizens to place this Referendum on the ballot. The City’s reluctance to provide citizens the opportunity to vote on major community issues is well established. It now appears that when citizens exercise their rights to have a vote, their motives apparently deserve to be questioned and criticized.
A solution that is in the best interests of the residents of Manzanita is:
1. Restore a reasonable residential household base water allotment of 12,000 gallons per quarter consistent with recognized national studies.
2. Do not increase the base residential water charge to more than $142.68 per quarter which is the current monthly charge of $47.56 times three. A tiered rate for usage in excess of the 12,000 gallon quarterly base is reasonable.
3. Require visitors to pay their share of any additional needed Water Utility Fund revenue for costs for the operation and production of our water through transfers of Transient Lodging Tax revenue to the Water Utility Fund. The City tells us that visitors through TLT taxes are paying to support our water infrastructure then fails to budget a single dollar of those taxes to the Water Utility Fund to back up this claim.
A reasonable request by residents would be to ask the Council to transfer a modest 7 – 10% of the annually collected TLT revenue to the Water Utility Fund as compensation from those visitors who are creating the demand and increased costs for the single most important infrastructure system in our community.
The City wants to present a water study on Wednesday of a typical small Oregon City where most if not all single family residential homes are occupied by full time residents. Not a single mention will be made of the impact of the now year round visitor customers who the City agrees drive up both water demand and costs.
The study conveniently omits any analysis of how TLT funds from visitors could be used to fund infrastructure improvements and keep rates lower for full time residents. Instead the study concludes that there are no other funding options available to the City other than rate increases combined with the continued present unrealistic base water allotment.
Conclusion. The City is content to have the relatively small number of actual full time residential households continue to subsidize visitor water usage and costs.
This Council believes compliance with City Ordinances is an option not a requirement.
Faulty analysis of water usage by full time residents doesn’t need further explanation.
Conservation is good, collecting monthly surcharges from full time residents is even better.
When the City claims that TLT revenue helps pay for water infrastructure, we shouldn’t expect to believe that this Council would really take the necessary steps to make this happen.
A relatively routine City business matter of adopting new water rates has now become a political embarrassment for the Council. The Council can take the opportunity to fix the problem it created and get on with other pressing matters or show us it is just business as usual when it comes to ignoring the interests of residents.
Randy Kugler
