Water Authority Forms Water Rate Advisory Commitee

The Dixon-Solano Water Authority took a small, but significant step in its mission to be transparent with the community it serves.

During last night’s meeting of the DSWA, the board voted by a margin of 8-1  to create an advisory commission – dubbed the Water Rate Study Advisory Committee – made up of a rate payers who are at different water usage levels.

The advisory committee was one of the items that the DSWA discussed at its previous meeting. It also talked about increasing water rates by 79 percent and the dire financial outlook that the Authority will be in if it doesn’t take steps to get it back on track.

The committee formed Tuesday however, does not have a clear directive as the DSWA has not discussed if it will use it as a sounding board for rate payers, scrutinize its expenses and revenues, make recommendations to the Authority or perhaps a little of each. Nevertheless, the committee is set to assist the board in making decisions that will affect hundreds of rate payers and could raise water rates that could help restore the Authority back to fiscal health.

The board is comprised of rate payers in different water usage levels. For example, Dixon Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Brian Dolan represents an institutional rate payer; Ron Mulligan of Basalite Concrete Products in Dixon represents an industrial user. At least six residential users are also on the board-appointed commission representing low, medium and high residential water rate payers.

But one group that has no representation on the commission is members of Dixon’s Chapter of the Solano County Taxpayers Association. The group refuses to be a part of the commission until it gets some answers.

Last year the DSWA levied a 9 percent increase in the water rates. This rate increase came under protest from the Solano County Taxpayers Association, but eventually the group accepted it with the stipulation that the board would inform the group about its finances said Drew Graska, vice president of the Dixon Chapter of the SCTA.

“We has this discussion a year ago and we basically blesses your one-year (rate) increase,” Graska told the board. “Tell us why you want an increase. Justify your purpose for an increase. Show us the money. Show us where you are cutting it and saving it."

In a letter to City Manager Nancy Huston, the DSWA and the Solano Irrigation District, Graska wrote: “No one in our group is interested in even considering participating with the City of Dixon or Solano Irrigation District in ANY form of rate discussion until our inquiries (originally raised by us this time last year when we, IN GOOD FAITH, endorsed a one-year rate increase) are addressed. It is one year later and the DC-SCTA has heard nothing and what is the JPA's position? To paste together a group of people it can manipulate into agreeing with their predisposition to raise rates so it can shirk responsibility for coming up with the idea of asking for more money and instead blame it on the committee - without displaying in detail, measures if any, taken to cut expenses.”

But board member Glen Grant said that the forming of the commission is the Authority’s way of informing the community about its finances, what SCTA is asking the board to do.

“I was very disappointed … by the response we got from the Solano Tax Payers Association,” he said. “In my recollection, at the time we made that one-year rate increase, it was my suggestion that we work with the (Solano Tax Payers Association). My interpretation is that the committee that we have established is exactly that. Without a Tax Payers Association, the committee won’t be as successful as it should have been, but we need to move forward.”

Graska vowed to be at as many of the commission's meetings, once they are established, as he could and encourage his group’s membership to do the same. Last night the Authority also took another step to be more transparent with the community by establishing a date for a Board Financial Workshop.

The workshop will give people a glimpse of what the Authority’s finances look like. The workshop is scheduled for May 23, 6 p.m., at the Solano Irrigation District offices at 810 Vaca Valley Parkway, Suite 201, in Vacaville.