Commentary: Davis Choices on Water Slipping Away

West Sacramento Option is Not Realistic and Electoral Defeat Self-Defeating –

Davis residents will get to vote on water this March, but what their true options are at that point is not clear.  The good news for Davis residents appears to be that the project has been scaled down to a more reasonable size.  The further good news is that it appears that the city will fix the rate structure that is and has been problematic.

The bad news is that once voters finally step inside of a voting booth next March, their choice will largely have been made for them.

Before both sides of the issue have a pitched fit here, I fully recognize that nothing has been officially decided, things could still change, and the project as well as the ballot language has yet to be decided.

But let us face reality – the writing is on the wall.

West Sacramento is not a serious option at this point in time, in my estimation.  I am not suggesting that the efforts by Mayor Joe Krovoza or Councilmember Brett Lee are insincere – I think we will listen to a proposal from West Sacramento, but I am not sure we will actually get one.

As Councilmember Brett Lee explained on Monday, while he and the mayor had attempted to meet with West Sacramento officials, they were reluctant to do so prior to receiving written documentation from Davis.

“I can tell you unequivocally, that when I speak with West Sac, my goal is to obtain the best possible deal for the people of Davis,” he wrote.  “My job in these negotiations has nothing to do with Woodland, the JPA, DBO, or anything else – I am focused on working with West Sac to obtain the best deal for our community.”

He added, “I am not wedded to either the Woodland or West Sac project. I have not made up my mind. The Woodland option is more expensive but has fewer regulatory hurdles. West Sac is less expensive, but has some additional regulatory risk, and does not ultimately lead to ownership of the facilities.”

Unfortunately, the consideration of West Sacramento simply came up too late.  Davis does not have the time to properly study the option, and the pressure of the Woodland deadline will eventually push the decision-makers to Woodland as the ‘safer’ alternative.

West Sacramento would become a more realistic option should the ballot measure fail in March.

If that happens, no one is really sure what will happen next.  It seems unlikely that the city would get a better deal.

What we know is that Woodland is ready to walk at the slightest delay at this point – they have warned and threatened both city leaders and, earlier this month, the voters in an op-ed.

Matt Williams, an alternate on the WAC, speculated that if Davis voters vote down the referendum, “Davis is going to have to come up with enough ‘pot sweeteners’ to offer West Sacramento in order to make a deal with them attractive enough for them to consider, and those ‘pot sweeteners’ will drive up the cost of a West Sac alternative.”

He also noted, because of regulatory and permitting necessities, that there will be delay getting water to Davis, between about three and six years.

Mr. Williams believes that “a regional plant at Bryte Bend serving West Sac, Woodland and Davis was the most ecologically and economically sensible path to be pursuing. However, that ‘best path’ clearly isn’t going to happen, so we have to deal with the realities on the ground now.”

And the reality on the ground at this point in time is that Davis voting down whatever is on the March ballot is going to severely restrict Davis’ options and drive up the cost.

As Mr. Williams notes, as much as Davis and Woodland are mismatches, West Sacramento “is even less like Davis than Woodland is.”

But here’s the thing, and everyone needs to understand it, policy makers and WAC alike – in my calculations there is actually a fairly decent chance that this thing will not pass.

Even if the WAC and the council manage to fix the rate structure, the rate hikes alone are going to cause enough people to balk.  If enough of the policy makers are on board with this move, then there will not be enough of a campaign to create the discontent necessarily to defeat this.

Unfortunately I do not see that scenario occurring.  Because West Sacramento is not a serious option, and because some believe there are less than above-the-board reasons for West Sacramento not being seriously considered, a move to Woodland will trigger opposition and opposition will trigger the defeat of the ballot measure.

This was entirely predictable and it needs to be laid squarely at the feet of the previous councils.  The council majority from 2006 to 2010 – Don Saylor, Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson, were content to ram this through and force future councils to deal with the tough issues.

“Without casting blame, I must admit I truly lament that the councils that preceded us did not have the foresight to better financially plan for this project,” Councilmember Lee respectfully writes.  “We have been told that accessing surface water has been in the works ‘for the past 20 years.’ If that has been so, why have we not put any money aside for this very expensive project?”

In fact, Mr. Lee is being kind to his predecessors.  The council knew this was coming and yet, in their initial Prop 218, they only noticed a 5% rate increase on the eve of the 2010 Election.  That meant that Ruth Asmundson and Don Saylor knowingly saddled the next council with a series of 29% rate increases.

So the Davis voters are going to have to take their medicine and they are going to have to like it.

Moreover, despite all of the concerns about it, it looks like this project is doomed to private operation as part of the DBO process.

“If I were in charge of planning a project from the beginning, I would choose public operation. But, we are not at the beginning. We are looking at becoming a customer of West Sac and joining their existing water system so the DBO/public operation question is really a non-issue for that option,” Councilmember Lee wrote on Monday.

The fact is that the DBO has already been decided, since if we end up with the JPA, Mr. Lee writes, “[we end up with] Woodland with their timetable and the several years of preliminary work that have all been based on moving forward with the DBO approach.. So we are left with the DB vs DBO option with them.”

Now that does not seem to terribly bother Councilmember Lee.

That is because, in part, he reasons that he sees the DB versus DBO debate as “interesting philosophically.”

However, he argues, “If we go with the Woodland option, we will own and manage the water facility for 100 plus years. If we hire private companies to design and build the plant (no one is talking about hiring municipal workers to design and build the plant are they?) and then we either have a private company run the plant for the first 5 years or we have municipal employees run the plant for the first 5 years, in the overall scheme of things, in the 100 plus years we will be running the plant, I am not sure it really makes a big difference.”

He does add: “What does make a difference is how we are able to switch from private operation to public operation should we so desire. The current JPA framework seems to require 3 votes to change the method of operation. I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea that unless we can find three votes on the JPA we will be locked in to private operation for the foreseeable future.”

So, there you have it.  The city of Davis and its voters are largely locked into their choice.  They are locked in because of the stubborn doggedness of the previous council that failed to plan for the future with rate hikes, a rate study and proper outreach.  And we are locked into this because we have no other realistic options at this point.

I am not particularly happy about this revelation, but it is what it is.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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