The Vanguard continues to await data from the city, regarding a critical question – what will happen to the water rates in the event that Measure I is defeated and we continue to rely on groundwater?In his column on Tuesday, Bob Dunning reprints an email communication from someone he calls his friend “Bill” at Comcast.net.
This past week, the Vanguard wrote an analysis questioning the results of a poll released by the Yes on Measure I campaign, which showed the surface water project passing by a wide margin of 63-11%, with about 26% undecided.
As we wrote on Saturday, that is not to argue that Measure I is not ahead – it may well be. Nor is there indication it will not prevail – and may even prevail by large margins. What I will argue is that 11% opposition is too low and that we should take these results with a healthy degree of skepticism. Because of the limited release, we only have circumstantial evidence here, but we have the school tax election results and the 2011 polling by the district on voter priorities that suggest that number is far too low.
One of the big questions in the water debate is the estimation of maintenance costs to the existing water distribution system.
In May of 2011, the teams of Brown and Caldwell and Kennedy-Jenks submitted a report to the city of Davis on the Water System Optimization Plan, that defines the improvements needed to optimally integrate a new surface water supply for the City of Davis.
Another multi-author commentary on the water project makes the argument, “If Davis fails to implement a conjunctive use project, the city would not be acting in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Why, they argue? They write, “The city of Davis cannot sustain its present course of action. The city has been borrowing money on an existing line of credit to pay for its crumbling water infrastructure. This is because necessary water rate increases have been put on hold while decisions are being made on the best course of action.”
Count me as skeptical. It is not that I think the Measure I folks are intentionally blowing smoke here, but I just view their poll, showing Measure I having a 63-11 percent lead, with a good deal of skepticism.
In the political world, campaign internal polls are notoriously skewed. That seems like a strange thing, especially given the fact that most of the polling is conducted for strategic purposes like this one.
A poll, whose results were released on Thursday, shows that Davis voters are not only highly aware of the much anticipated ballot measure, but support it by a wide margin.
The survey was conducted December 27-31 by the polling firm of Moore Methods, of Sacramento. It surveyed 300 likely voters.
Given that voting on the rates on this water project begins in just over two weeks, it is perhaps surprising that we have so few answers as we do to still very critical questions. But there we were on Tuesday night, on the eve of sending out the Prop 218 rate notices, and the Davis City Council suddenly made the decision to switch from a partially-debt funded financing process to an all-debt funded financing process.
In the process of that discussion, Herb Niederberger, the City’s General Manager of Utilities, presented the council with a graph comparing the revenues needed in both options.
It was yet another curveball on Tuesday night, as the council was getting set to approve the water rates that would be mailed to ratepayers through the Prop 218 process.
Suddenly the business community came before the council, and while they remained in support of the project, they argued that the rate increases were too steep and too sharp, particularly given this economy.
The announcement that Moody’s Investors Service last week downgraded the city of Woodland’s (CA) 2002 Lease Revenue Bonds to A2 from A1 and 2005 Lease Revenue Bonds to A3 from A2, trigger a bit of a stir and some misconceptions about the potential impact of the rating downgrade on the joint Woodland-Davis water project.
According to the January 10, release, “The A2 rating for the 2002 Lease Revenue Bonds reflects the continued external support of debt service payments from the Sewer Development Fund and Sewer Enterprise Fund and the highly essential nature of the leased asset (the city’s wastewater collection and treatment system).”
When the Vanguard interviewed the Measure I proponents recently, Elaine Roberts Musser, who chaired the WAC, said, “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. We’re going to have to go to a conjunctive use project at some point and we’ve delayed already. We could have tapped into Lake Berryessa at some point and never did, we missed that opportunity.”
Her claim about the missed opportunity of Lake Berryessa water is not an isolated claim and has become part of the lore involving the surface water project – a warning, if you will, that if we miss this opportunity with the current surface water project, we will have made the same mistake that was made 50 years ago.
Nearly a month ago, the Vanguard met with, and interviewed, the opposition to the Measure I campaign. On Friday, the Vanguard sat down with three representatives of the Yes on Measure I campaign – two members of the WAC, Chair Elaine Roberts Musser and Alf Brandt, along with Alan Pryor.
“The Davis-Woodland Water Supply project ensures that Davis for decades to come will have a clean, safe, and sustainable water supply,” said Alf Brandt who works with the California State Assembly as a principal consultant on water resources and delta management. Along those lines he argued that the project is “better for the Delta.”
The Vanguard was out on Saturday morning at the Davis Farmer’s Market and collected the first round of literature from both the Yes on Measure I and the No on Measure I folks.
As we noted yesterday, the literature is presented today without editorial comment. Fact Checking of the issues raised will be occurring and the Vanguard will present the findings as they become available.
We are less than a month away from the ballots being sent out and less than two months from the end of the Measure I campaign. Ballots are due March 5, but it seems like we have barely begun.
While the Vanguard presents the arguments made without commentary or analysis, at a later point, we may do some fact-checking.
Veolia, one of the three main bidders for the DBO in the surface water project, has been the subject of scrutiny, because one of its subsidiaries operates a bus line through the occupied territory in Palestine, opening the agency up to concerns by Palestinian rights groups about the propriety of doing business with a company that is operating in an area where possible racism and discrimination is occurring.In addition, a review of the company by the Vanguard last fall showed a number of problems with the operations of some of its North American water plants.
When the council created and appointed the members of the Water Advisory Committee (WAC), the Vanguard was highly skeptical, to say the least.
Back in November of 2011, we wrote, “Whatever name and scope the council eventually chooses for the utility committee, the question is what value will be gleaned from such a committee?”
Each year we have done something different to wrap up the previous year and move us into the new year. This year, instead of a full year in review, we decided to talk about a number of big issues from 2012 that have gone unresolved, headed in 2013.
We start with the issue that largely dominated the last month and a half of coverage, and that figures to dominate the first two months of 2013 as we move toward a March 5 election that is extremely compressed.
Eliminating Tiers Widens the Shift of Subsidization to the Low Users – The Vanguard strongly supported the council adoption of the CBFR system, but there were compromises that were needed to get this system approved on the second pass.The biggest and most obvious compromise is having approximately 20 months under the Bartles Wells Fixed Rate, with Inclining Block Rate. While mitigated somewhat by moving from a system that relied on 50% fixed costs, down to 40%, you still end up costing the low-end users – the bottom 25% – between five and ten dollars per month in the first year, and somewhat more than that in the second year.
Commentary – Last week, the Davis City Council made a mistake – whether they feared the uncertainty of the untested rate structure or the public cries of a certain newspaper columnist – the council voted not only to move away from the WAC-recommended CBFR rate structure, but to preclude them from discussing it.It is ironic that when the WAC was created, the Vanguard was not only a skeptic of the board, but an outright critic, fearing the likelihood that the body would merely rubberstamp the preferences of the members who appointed them.
On December 8, the Vanguard ran the Impartial Analysis by City Attorney Harriet Steiner along with the arguments for and against Measure I, the water initiative that will be on the March 5, 2013 ballot.
The arguments in favor of Measure I were signed by the Davis City Council: Mayor Joe Krovoza, Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk, and Councilmembers Rochelle Swanson, Lucas Frerichs, and Brett Lee. The arguments against Measure I were signed by former Councilmembers Sue Greenwald and Michael Harrington, along with Mark Siegler and Michael Bartolic of the WAC, and Pam Nieberg.
That may not be the only, nor the biggest, flaw with the current ballot schedule, a schedule that has the ballot measure voting close on March 5, but the Prop 218 rate process close later in March.
