A three-member City Council failed to reach agreement Tuesday on a plan to build an $8.5-million, 1.4-million-gallon water reservoir off Vineyard Avenue that officials said will be needed next summer to meet growing demand in Ruby Hill and the Vineyard Corridor.
After the decision, City Manager Nelson Fialho and Public Works Director Rob Wilson scheduled meetings with contractors who had submitted the winning bids to persuade them to extend the Aug. 31 deadline on their offers. Fialho, with the council’s concurrence, will seek an extension until early September so that the lawmakers can reconsider their vote at the council’s next regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 5.
Because Councilman Steve Brozosky lives on Vineyard Avenue close to the proposed site of the reservoir project, he had to recuse himself from voting on the contract proposal. Mayor Jennifer Hosterman was out of town and absent from the meeting, leaving Councilman and Vice Mayor Matt Sullivan and council members Jerry Thorne and Cindy McGovern making up the three-member quorum. In those situations, it takes all three, or a majority of the full five member council, to approve measures.
Although Sullivan and Thorne reluctantly agreed to support the staff’s recommendation to accept the $8.5-million in planning design and construction costs–up from $3.3-million in 2002 and more than $2 million higher than a year ago–McGovern said no. She said the financing plan shown to the council for the first time Tuesday by Fialho and Wilson was confusing and not realistic.
“I am looking at all of these variables and have no idea what the costs might ultimately be,” she said.
Looking at the city management staff that was advancing the plan and waving her hands in frustration, she added: “I don’t know how many businesses in this community would put forward a project like this and then not know how they are going to finish it because they don’t have a finance plan.”
But Fialho and Wilson insisted that there are sufficient funds to pay the $4.4 million cost of the proposed new water tank that would be built southwest of Vineyard atop a 636-foot site on land owned by the Reznick/Threehand Property Partnership. A rough-graded road, design fees and construction support would be handled and funded during the coming 12 months as the tank is being built.
“It’s absolutely essential that this tank be up and operating by next summer,” said Councilman Jerry Thorne. “If we have another dry summer and there’s an emergency that requires huge amounts of water, we’ll be in trouble without this tank.”
Thorne, like McGovern, objected to the late notice on the reservoir funding plans put forward by Wilson and Steve Cusenza, Pleasanton’s utility planning manager. But Thorne said a previous council may have looked at this plan back in 2002 and given the green light.
“All three of us who comprised the council Tuesday night are fairly new to the board,” said Thorne, who was elected last year and is also seeking re-election. Sullivan and McGovern won their council seats in 2004.
The reservoir was part of the Vineyard Corridor Specific Plan, which was approved in 1998. It authorizes the construction of 189 new homes, plus another six lots to be developed outside the planning area that would become part of the overall development. It also provided for a new alignment for Vineyard Avenue, which was completed two years ago, and for a school site for the proposed Neal Elementary School, which has not been built.
Cusenza said the water tank was planned to hold one million gallons initially, but increased water usage in the area caused planners to add another 400,000 gallons in capacity.
He said water usage in Vineyard Corridor is higher than average, with the typical Ruby Hill home using 3,000 gallons a day, compared to an average of 618 gallons a day in mainline Pleasanton. He added that the vineyards along Vineyard Avenue use untreated water from Zone 7 to keep the plants wet.
When the 1998 specific plan was approved, fees from the developers and school district were expected to pay the lion’s share of the utility costs in the Vineyard Corridor. Then a recession hit, forcing the postponement and cancellation of most of the housing projects. The school district, citing increased costs to build Neal, delayed that project, and is now in litigation with Signature Properties and another developer over an agreement to pay part of the school construction costs. As a result, where the city government thought it would pay only a small portion of the infrastructure costs in the corridor, including the water reservoir, it has become the key funding source, at least until reimbursements come in from future development.
The council was astounded by the mushrooming costs of the reservoir project, which were estimated at $3.3 million in 2002, $4.6 million in 2004, $6.4 million last year and now at $8.5 million.
“It’s unbelievable how fast these costs are going up,” Thorne said. “Someone said they want to protect the taxpayer by taking a longer look at this project. I want to protect the taxpayer by moving on quickly to get this job done before costs escalate again. We know we need the water tank; let’s build it.”
