The staff report to next week’s WAC meeting and attached letters of correspondence suggest that the West Sacramento water alternative is dead. While Mayor Joe Krovoza believes this is the end of the line for the West Sacramento option, his colleague Brett Lee thinks it is too soon to close the door completely.In an email to the Vanguard, Mayor Joe Krovoza expressed gratitude to council and staff for carrying forward the recommendations of the WAC in exploring further options with West Sacramento and Woodland.
“In the case of West Sacramento, our requests to meet were declined and the exchange of letters is clear. We greatly appreciate the efforts of the West Sacramento staff to define the issues for discussion,” the mayor said. “In the end, the communities are simply too far apart for West Sacramento to engage with us further.”
According to the staff report, “Davis prepared a list of deal points for negotiations to secure delivery of water supply.”
The letter dated September 17 from Davis City Manager Steve Pinkerton to West Sacramento City Manager Martin Tuttle lays out an “initial proposal for the deal points that will be the basis for a business agreement between the City of West Sacramento and the City of Davis for the wheeling of water through the Bryte Bend Water Treatment Plant [BBWTP]. The deal points layout the basis for the proposed agreement including connection fees and term and termination of the agreement.”
As Mr. Pinkerton indicates, “These deal points are intended to facilitate the discussion between our Council members” at a follow up meeting.
There are two critical points that appear to be the points in dispute.
First, Davis asked for “A one-time purchase of the capital investment (connection fee) needed to permanently secure 12 MGD of capacity in West Sacramento’s existing surface water treatment plant at Bryte Bend on the Sacramento River, not to exceed $6 Million.”
Second, with regard to the length of the contract, the city asked for: “A long term contract of at least 30 years with an automatically renewable term of 30 years. Renewals will not be unreasonably withheld. Termination must be with 10 years notice. Any determination by West Sacramento not to renew would require West Sacramento to re-purchase the capacity in the plant at the then current value.”
However, West Sacramento could not agree to these terms.
In a response on September 24 from Mr. Tuttle, he wrote: “Based on West Sacramento’s growth projections, we would be able to commit to a term of approximately 20 years (2032), unless and until additional capacity is added at the BBWTP.”
He added, “Without supporting analysis, your connection fee proposal falls short of that needed to advance the negotiations between our two cities. According to the analysis performed by our consultant, the connection fee required would be $12.66 million or $19.4 million, as outlined in the attached staff proposal.”
The difference in the two costs is that at the lower end, Davis would “be responsible to fund necessary future BBWTP expansion, including cost of expanded intake structure” whereas at the higher end, “West Sacramento would be responsible to fund necessary future BBWTP expansion. Davis would be responsible to fund the cost of expanded intake structure.”
As the mayor told the Vanguard, at the level that West Sacramento is proposing, the difference in costs between the Woodland and West Sacramento option would not be sufficient to make it worth the other downsides of the West Sacramento option.
The staff report summarizes this state of affairs: “West Sacramento desires to preserve their assets without discounting their value and therefore did not agree to the two main deal points requested by the Davis WAC: 1) a reduced connection fee of $6 million; and 2) an initial 30-year contract term.”
Furthermore, as the mayor indicated, staff writes, “One-on-one discussions between the two city’s mayors resulted in West Sacramento declining further discussions given the significant gap in each party’s proposed terms. These negotiations have been concluded due to lack of a viable compromise.”
“West Sacramento has built a water supply project they plan to use, and accommodating the future water needs of a larger community like Davis with the cost and duration needs we would require was simply too great a challenge,” Mayor Krovoza told the Vanguard. “Many may hope the situation were different, but it isn’t.”
In the meantime, Woodland continues to play hardball, as well.
The staff reports that on August 31, 2012 Davis’s delegation of Dan Wolk and Rochelle Swanson met with Woodland Councilmembers Bill Marble and Skip Davies to “determine a basis for renegotiation of the allocations within the Woodland Davis Clean Water Agency Joint Powers Agreement (JPA).”
“There are multiple avenues to formulate an equitable solution and ample room for consideration of altering that allocation,” staff reports. “But Woodland will not discuss cost share of the treated water pipelines and will only entertain those negotiations within the confines of the JPA. Too much of a change in the allocation might also require a change in the voting allocation or weighting.”
Woodland indicated that it “wants to be viewed by Davis as a partner, not to be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the City of West Sacramento.”
Moreover, “Woodland need the source of surface water supply, regardless of what Davis decides, and intends to go forward with the intake and treatment plant project with or without Davis.”
Finally, “When Davis decides what it wants, they need to approach Woodland as a member of the JPA.”
Woodland has been playing hardball, which included the op-ed by Councilmembers Marble and Davies in the Davis Enterprise.
Woodland needs to understand first that the city of Davis pushed forward the water project under previous councils that went further than the voters were willing to go. And that, as of right now, it is very much in the air whether a JPA with Woodland could get a majority vote.
For his part, the mayor remains hopeful that, with Woodland, issues can be resolved.
“With Woodland, the city’s leaders have committed to discussions on issues of great importance to Davis and for this we are grateful,” the mayor told the Vanguard. “The issues the WAC has identified for our Council to resolve with Woodland are of great importance; I have every expectation Woodland will work with us to resolve them. “
—David M. Greenwald reporting
If I were the Mayor of West Sacramento, would I spend one second with the Davis Mayor, when I knew that the Davis Mayor was the main cheerleader for the Woodland JPA and was basically forced by the WAC and other CC members to reach out to West Sacramento?
Of course Mayor Kravoza is going to get up on stage and do the dance, but make sure it failed.
Well, guess what? It failed, at least for now.
Mike, go away.
i decided that i’m simply not going to support any kind of jpa. i think they’re too restrictive and we end up getting stuck with bad policy.
[i]”…his colleague Brett Lee thinks it is too soon to close the door completely.”
[/i]
I’d be curious as to Brett’s reasoning.
GI: “i decided that i’m simply not going to support any kind of jpa. i think they’re too restrictive and we end up getting stuck with bad policy.”
How so? Is it because we have to cooperate with our neighbors? I know that is a difficult concept for some in town, but what exactly would you propose as an alternative? Rent water access from West Sac for 20 years? Then what? Or would you prefer that Davis just build our own plant and operate it with City employees. Do you really think that will be cheaper?
Better?
The JPA is a great way for two entities to cooperate to provide services for their constituents. Cooperation, shared costs, and economies of scale all work to lower our costs both for construction and operation. We will own the infrastructure, we will have a good source of water available in perpetuity, and we will have control over the process through the contract. How does this restrict us in any way? No source of water in 20 years will be much more restrictive, just as having no say in the operations of the plant, which is where we will be with West Sac.
mark: i don’t have a problem cooperating with our neighbors. in fact, i’d encourage it. the problem i have with the jpa is it moves beyond cooperation to dictatorship. how? once we agree to the terms, it takes a majority vote to change the terms which means once things are in place, we’re stuck with things. i don’t like to lose that level of autonomy particularly to woodland.
Growth Issue: so how do you suggest we solve the regulatory issues regarding our water and provide for a long-term water supply for Davis?
why not just a joint project without the jpa? why not opt out clauses? why not allow two votes veto current policies? there are all sorts of ways we could address my concerns. i’d like to hear why brett lee doesn’t think west sac’s option is done. that’s my preferred alternative.
1. How would you run a major utility with two municipal governments in the absence of a joint powers agreement?
2. How would you obtain financing for a project if it were easy for the governments to opt out? Lenders would be out of their minds to finance such a shaky enterprise.
3. Woodland won’t do it without a JPA, and they are going forward without Davis if necessary.
“why not just a joint project without the jpa?”
How would you do that. Do you really want the project to be subject to changes every time there is an election in either town? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. The point of the JPA is to buffer the project from the silly political swings that are experienced every few years. Stability is a benefit, and requiring three votes creates that stability. This helps with financing, with operations and with long term planning. This is not giving up autonomy to Woodland, it is sharing autonomy with our Woodland partners. What do you propose as a workable solution?
Growth issue said . . .
[i]”mark: i don’t have a problem cooperating with our neighbors. in fact, i’d encourage it. the problem i have with the jpa is it moves beyond cooperation to dictatorship. how? once we agree to the terms, it takes a majority vote to change the terms which means once things are in place, we’re stuck with things. i don’t like to lose that level of autonomy particularly to Woodland.
Why not just a joint project without the jpa? why not opt out clauses? why not allow two votes veto current policies? there are all sorts of ways we could address my concerns. i’d like to hear why brett lee doesn’t think west sac’s option is done. that’s my preferred alternative.”[/i]
GI, I’ve come to respect you as the dialogue about water has evolved here in the Vanguard, and I think you bring up a really important point here. The reality is that the worldview (David’s term) of both Woodland and West Sac is very, very different that Davis’. Because of that your suggested solution really does resonate. In fact the current effort throughout Yolo County to create a common shared service for Animal Control is following exactly the model you propose. The key to being able to pursue that model in Animal Control is that there isn’t enough up front expenditure of capital to warrant borrowing any money, and borrowing money changes the game completely . . . especially if you want to get a reasonable interest rate for the money borrowed. The reality is that we are not losing our autonomy to Woodland, but rather losing our autonomy to the lending institutions.
Because of the 2-2 voting structure of the JPA Board, there is absolute parity for the two parties in terms of any loss of functional autonomy. You have couched the conundrum in terms of “i don’t like to lose that level of autonomy particularly to Woodland” but the reality is that citizens of Woodland could just as easily say, “i don’t like to lose that level of autonomy particularly to Davis” and their statement would be just as correct (and just as incorrect) as your statement.
I can only speculate about what Brett Lee means. If he thinks that the door to West Sac is still open a crack, I’m sure he will do what he can to determine if things truly are over, or if the Mayor misheard.
It seems to me that Woodland and West Sacramento are busy resolving their own situations and efforts to treat these two cities as competing vendors has only resulted in neither wanting to do business with us. I completely understand why Woodland will only deal with us as members of the JPA – a equal shared oversight – especially when dealing with Davis. I’m sure Mike Harrington is applauding this turn of events, because he wants neither project to go forward and would prefer for us to be merely customer. I suspect that we’ve become a topic of derision in in these other cities and beyond. Instead of being a leader in the region, we are just “crazy narcissistic Davis.”