More than a thousand people have recently signed a new petition to ask the Pleasanton City Council and city staff to postpone the upcoming decision to increase water rates.

The petition on change.org, which cites just over 1,600 signatures as of Wednesday morning, claims that city officials have not done a good job communicating accurate information about their proposal -- which is a shared concern among some residents.

Resident concerns were heightened after the city sent out a state-mandated public notice brochure, which many said was very confusing to read and understand. Several residents, like Jocelyn Combs, even pointed out formatting errors that made the document difficult to follow.

"I am not disputing the necessity of increasing the water rates," longtime resident Jocelyn Combs told the Weekly. "What my concern is, is that I'm not quite sure what the increase is based on the information that was sent out, and that's really unfortunate."

However city leaders continue to say the rate increases are necessary and are working through different online mediums to put out as much information as possible before the council makes an official decision regarding the rates at its Sept. 19 meeting.

"The city is committed to being transparent in this rate-setting process and has created additional information in response to community questions, including a special edition 'Pleasanton Pipeline' e-newsletter and a 'Water Rate FAQ' that clarifies much of the information on the public hearing notice," city communication manager Heather Tiernan told the Weekly. "The official public hearing notice is prescriptive as to what is included to satisfy all legal requirements."

The city had been on track to raise its water rates back in 2019. At the time, city officials were planning to conduct a water rate study, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they put a pause on the study.

That led to three years of no increases, which Councilmember Julie Testa said was something that put the city financially behind and left the current council in a difficult position of having to raise the rates in order to begin restoring the city's water enterprise fund.

"With the kind of money we're talking about ... it sounds like a big increase because we're coming from being pretty far behind," Testa told the Weekly.

If approved at the Sept. 19 council meeting, the water rates would go up by 30% beginning Nov. 1, followed by another 20% increase beginning Jan. 1, 2025 and a 12% increase the following year.

Single-family residential customers would see an average increase of about $33 every other month during the first year, depending on their bimonthly water consumption, according to the city's website.

While Testa said that she is the last person who wants to raise the rates for residents, it is necessary to start building funds in order to address future water infrastructure and supply projects -- especially in light of the city's ongoing issue with PFAS, or forever chemicals, in its groundwater systems.

"The proposed rate increases will allow for the funding of near-term projects to provide for the delivery of additional water from Zone 7 and other water distribution system improvements," Tiernan said. "Rates have only been adjusted for inflation since 2011, except for 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2022 when there weren't any increases at all. These inflationary increases do not account for capital projects such as infrastructure repairs and improvements."

That's why during the July 18 meeting, the City Council moved forward with sending out the public notice late last month, so that residents could see the rate increase breakdowns for themselves.

But that notice was what also caused a lot of the pushback from residents.

"It was filled with mistakes," longtime resident Linda Kelly told the Weekly. "As they put it together, the tables were in the wrong place and didn't describe what the text described. It was put together too fast."

Kelly, who said she was speaking to the Weekly solely as a resident and not as a representative of the city's Energy and Environment Committee, stated that not only was the information hard to digest, she even knew a few people who had accidentally thrown away the public notice thinking it was junk mail.

And to her, that combined with the lack of information on how the rate increases compared to what residents are currently paying and errors throughout the brochure tells her that the city is rushing this process.

Diane Rodriguez, who supports the online petition to postpone the increases, also told the Weekly that as a resident, she didn't appreciate the way the public notice was laid out either.

She said that there was too much unnecessary information about the Zone 7 Water Agency and other fees and that the information should have been tightened up and focused specifically on the change ratepayers will be noticing over the next three years.

She was also particularly worried about the increase over those three years and claimed, after doing the math herself, that she saw an increase of over 1,000% in her own bills for her Pleasanton home.

"I think that's a stunning number and they don't want to talk about it," Rodriguez said. "They want us to look at all the numbers combined together, but I don't think you should because the other numbers aren't changing that much. It's their numbers that are changing so much."

However, according to Tiernan, those several components to the water rates on current utility bills, including usage-based charges for both Zone 7 and Pleasanton as well as the one fixed-meter charge, are important aspects to consider when talking about the rates overall.

She addressed some of the comments from the community that called out the increases saying that they will put residents at the higher ends of rates compared to surrounding cities.

"There have been comments that after the three years of rate increases, Pleasanton's rates will no longer be at the lower end of surrounding agencies," Tiernan said. "Comparing Pleasanton's 2026 rates to other agencies' 2023 is not comparing like values as we don't know how other agencies' rates will change in the upcoming years."

For her part, Testa said that the petition, which called out several components of the rate increases saying that the changes would be drastically significant, is distorting the actual numbers and what they actually mean.

"When looking at individual components of the proposed rates, some changes are significant," Tiernan added. "However, as part of the overall rate recalibration included in the water rate study, the increase for the average single-family residence is about $33 per billing cycle (every two months), which equates to an approximately 30% increase in the total water portion of the utility bill, or about a 13% increase to the overall utility bill. 55% of Pleasanton's single-family residential customers are in this usage tier."

Tiernan also said that while the current "Pleasanton Water Var Charge" distribution rate, which she said has been the main focus in the community, is changing significantly due to the costs shifting from fixed-meter charges as it does not sufficiently cover the cost of delivering water to the city's 22,000 customers and maintaining the distribution system.

"Focusing on only specific components of the proposed rate increase gives an incomplete view and understanding of the overall rate adjustment that was recommended in the water rate study," Tiernan said. "The city understands that the proposed rate increase is significant, but after years of minimal or no increases the current rates simply aren't enough to address critical issues such as PFAS and aging infrastructure, and without this rate increase, necessary improvements will not be possible."

However, residents such as Combs and Kelly said that they understand the need for water rate increases and that their issues are more with how things feel rushed and how the issues with the public notice are not allowing residents to make accurate judgements on the increases before the Sept. 19 meeting.

"We deserve better. We're the ones that are paying this," Combs said, adding that the public notice could have helped prevent any distrust from residents.

"It wasn't transparent. It wasn't clear," Combs added. "I'm not suggesting that this was done on purpose. I just think it was very poorly done because transparency builds trust, and lack of transparency erodes trust."