SLO residents will pay more for monthly water and sewer costs

Residents of San Luis Obispo will be paying more for water and sewer after the City Council unanimously passed rate increases Tuesday.

The new rates, which are set to go into affect at the start of the 2018-19 fiscal year on July 1, will amount to about 3 percent higher costs for water services and 4 percent for sewer costs for the average residential household, according to city officials.

The city also changed how it assesses those fees by increasing the monthly base, which is fixed, while lowering fees assessed by how much water customers use each month under a tiered system that charges more for higher use.

A residential customer using five units of water per month (a unit is 748 gallons) will pay $50.11 monthly under the new rates versus $48.68 under the previous policy, according to city officials.

The average monthly sewer cost will increase to $57.94 from $55.77 under the new structure.

The city's base fee for residential water services will increase from $12.63 to $20.61 and for sewer it will rise from $8.57 to $18.69.

But the per-unit cost will drop from $7.27 to $5.90 for the average user of five units, while sewer costs will dip from $9.44 per unit to $7.85.

A Proposition 218 protest fell significantly short of the needed majority vote with more than 600 residents opposing the increases, while more than 7,000 votes were necessary to deny the new fees through customer opposition.

Carrie Mattingly, the city's utilities director, said related infrastructure is in need of maintenance, and the city is striving to ensure revenue is stable amid a drought when people use less water.

"Our systems are getting older and in need of repairs and upkeep," Mattingly said after the meeting. "Some sections of our sewer system in certain neighborhoods are 100 years old, though most of it was built in the 1970s and 1980s."

Mattingly also said the cost to deliver water is expensive, but it's a resource that people expect and depend on. Councilman Dan Rivoire said the city needs to catch up from past years of no rate increases to help fund its system.

"I was talking to a young person traveling in Guatemala who said, 'They don't have automated water like we do,'" Mattingly said. "That automated water when you turn on the tap is incredibly expensive to deliver."

Mattingly said the water and sewer funding helps meet a top priority of budget stability, and the increase will bring an estimated additional $16.5 million dollars to fund water services in 2018-2019, an increase of 5.5 percent over last year, and $13.6 million in new sewer funding, an increase of 3 percent.

The hikes also include increases for multifamily, irrigation and business uses.

Critics said at Tuesday's meeting that the increases are unfair, given the already high cost of living in San Luis Obispo, and that they believed they are subsidizing future development, including three hotels coming to the downtown.

Mattingly said that despite fears the city will run out of water, especially in continued drought conditions, its water portfolio is solid and capable of supplying the city through its General Plan build-out.

The General Plan projects the city reaching a population of about 57,000 by 2035 (the city's population is currently about 46,000).

Most of the city's water comes from Nacimiento Lake, but the city's available resources also include Whale Rock Reservoir, Salinas Reservoir, as well as ground water, which it has not needed to tap into during the drought because of its comprehensive water supply, Mattingly said.

Most of the city's water comes from Nacimiento because it has a "use-it-or-lose-it" water-rights contract, Mattingly said.

This story was originally published June 20, 2018 at 4:29 PM with the headline "SLO residents will pay more for monthly water and sewer costs."