|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Pleasanton City Council will be going over a study on the city’s water drought rates and connection fees this Tuesday before voting on staff’s recommendations to provide an 8 ccf per bill allotment to all water customers and to change the way the city calculates connection fees.
According to the June 3 staff report, the proposed update to the water drought rates is necessary as part of the city’s overall water rate-setting process, which is currently underway.
Last September, the city contracted with Water Resources Economics (WRE) to perform water rate and connection fee studies. The goal of those studies were to establish “cost-based and legally defensible rates and connection fees to support the long-term financial sustainability of the city’s water program.”
Pleasanton’s water systems, which supply and deliver water to customers in the city, are financed through the Water Enterprise Fund, which is funded through water rates and fees. The city previously raised the city’s water rates during a contentious rate-setting process in late 2022.
In order to establish new water rates, the city previously adopted a water system management plan and water enterprise financial analysis to set the foundation and framework for comprehensive water rate study. Then in May, WRE performed a rate design analysis to “allocate the revenue requirements determined as part of the financial plan among the different customer classes.”
That resulted in the city’s proposed water rates which have been finalized following the May 6 council meeting.
But according to the staff report, it is also necessary to update the city’s water drought rates, which are “consumption-based surcharges that can be implemented during water shortage emergencies to maintain the City’s financial position,” as part of the overall rate-setting process.
That’s why staff will be presenting a technical memorandum by the consultant which details the recommended rate structure that includes a “usage allotment for all customers of 8 centum cubic feet (ccf) every bi-monthly billing period exempt from the drought rate charges.”
CCF is a form of measuring water — for comparison, 5 ccf equals about 3,700 gallons of water.
“The recommended allotment accounts for the difficulty in reducing low-end usage during water shortage emergencies, while encouraging high-end usage to be reduced to meet conservation targets,” according to the staff report.
Apart from discussing the water rates and rate structure, the council will also be looking at possibly updating the city’s water connection fees, which according to staff are “one-time capital fees assessed against new development(s) to recover the proportional share of capital facility investment to be constructed or previously constructed to accommodate growth.”
In other words, the fees are charges imposed for connecting new services to a utility system — they are mostly used to cover infrastructure costs.
Staff will be asking the council to switch to a hybrid method of calculating the connection fee. The new fee is recommended to be $5,269 per dwelling unit equivalent.
Following Tuesday’s meeting, the next steps in the rate-setting process is to accept the water rate and connection fee reports and approve the Proposition 218 notice, which will be presented to council in July. The proposition mandates the city to inform residents about the proposed rates and provide reasoning behind the increases.
After that, the city will conduct a 60-day public review period followed by a public hearing to adopt the water rates and connection fees in October. If approved, the new rates and connection fees will be set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
The City Council meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday (June 3). The full agenda can be accessed here.
In other business:
* The council will be receiving a report from the Pleasanton Police Department that will include updates on key initiatives, recent crime trends, crime data reporting, personnel investigations and staffing.
The item was continued from the council’s May 6 meeting.
According to the staff report, one of the highlights from the past year includes the addition of a crime analyst, which has allowed the department to “target and solve certain types of crimes more effectively.”
The report states that crimes are down 10% to 15% and, while still an issue, the city saw a significant decrease in property crime last year. Other points of note include PPD using force in less than 1% of all contacts, staffing being stable, youth engagement efforts having grown and the department’s continued effort to refine emergency response times.
* During the consent calendar, which are items considered routine in nature and are typically approved by a single vote, the council will be voting on approving professional service agreements with five consultants that help the city provide “on-call building and fire code plan review, and permit counter and inspection services.”
According to Tuesday’s staff report, the total aggregate amount for the contracts will be a not-to-exceed yearly total of $1,039,500, for a total of $3,118,500 over the initial three-year term. The existing on-call agreements are set to expire at the end of June, which is why staff are recommending to approve the contracts for the five firms so that the new agreements could start in July. These agreements, according to staff, will cover “plan review, permit counter, and inspection services for three years through June 30, 2028, with the option for up to two additional one-year extensions.”
“The city has historically used outside consultants to augment in-house staff for on-call building and fire code plan review, inspection, and permit counter services,” the staff report states. “These agreements are necessary to ensure adequate and timely resources are available to meet the demand for permitting- and construction-related services, and that specialist plan check services, beyond the expertise of city staff, can be provided for major projects.”
The city’s draft budget does include the roughly $1.03 million each year for the services and staff also pointed out that there is no guaranteed amount of work for the consultant firms. These costs, according to the staff report, that are related to the agreements are also directly tied to building development and fees, which should more than cover the costs.
“The (fiscal year) 2025/26 recommended budget anticipates $4.5 million in building plan check and permitting fee revenue, a portion of which funds outside plan check services and a portion of which funds city staff also providing plan check services, generally for smaller and more routine projects,” according to staff.
* The council will end Tuesday’s meeting with a public hearing and informational report regarding the city’s vacancy rate, recruitment and retention efforts in order to comply with Assembly Bill 2561, which requires agencies to publicly address those issues.
According to the staff report, the percentage of regular, full-time vacancies at the city is 5%.
