Anyone who harps on the importance of preserving agriculture,
who believes farmers play a key role in our still-semi- rural South
Valley – and we
’d include ourselves in those groups – ought to be outraged by
the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s approval of the recent rate
increase.
Anyone who harps on the importance of preserving agriculture, who believes farmers play a key role in our still-semi- rural South Valley – and we’d include ourselves in those groups – ought to be outraged by the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s approval of the recent rate increase.
Anyone who has been affected by hiring freezes, layoffs and distant memories of pay increases in the private sector – and we’d include ourselves – ought to be outraged by the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s approval of a 25 percent rate increase for municipal users.
Anyone who has heard about governmental budget crunches, reduced services and political overspending – and we’d include ourselves – ought to be outraged by the latest Santa Clara Valley Water District increase.
One letter writer who has read the water district’s budget numbers believes total water district employee compensation (salary and benefits) costs have increased by more than 50 percent over the last three years. Another letter writer who studied the district’s numbers believes it will increase total employee compensation by 73 percent over the next two years with the latest budget approval, making the average water district employee annual salary a whopping $119,000.
What’s clear is that, despite widespread budget woes, the water district and its employees have felt no fiscal pain.
Is anyone surprised that the water district is now crying poor and projecting a $1.7 million budget deficit?
Especially here in South Valley, where we constantly get the short end of the water district stick (think 50-year-old, uncompleted flood control projects – PL566), the water district’s rate increase is particularly difficult to stomach.
The federal and locally funded PL566 project improved Llagas Creek up to Morgan Hill’s southern border, then stopped when federal funding to go further failed to appear. The House of Representatives, last month approved $400,000 which will help design the improvements through Morgan Hill’s ever-flooding downtown but won’t do much to move the project forward.
The water district’s attempt to justify the increase, through its spokesman, is ironic and disturbing: “In an era when almost all local governments are having to reduce services or lay off people the water district hasn’t been caught in this trap. We are conservative when it comes to our finances.”
We can’t think of any economist who would call a 25-percent rate increase conservative. We can’t think of any personnel manager who would call double-digit percentage hike in employee compensation packages conservative. We can’t think of any accountant who would call a $1.7-million budget deficit conservative.
Call us fiscally frivolous, but we’d like to see the district “caught” in the trap of freezing employee compensation and, yes, even laying off workers before it imposes a 25 percent rate hike on customers who have no place else to go for water.
Our South Valley water district representatives, Sig Sanchez and Rosemary Kamei, have not been doing their job to protect users from such rate increases. It’s fair to wonder just who they represent, the rate payers and farmers in the South Valley or the preservation of the water district bureaucracy.
Water is frequently farmers’ second-highest expense after labor, and this latest increase is just another squeeze on the noose around farming profits. Maybe the farmers can get a job at the water district?
It’s time for some righteous citizen outrage. We deserve water district directors who will keep their obligations to citizens, not district employees, as their top priority.
Water district elections are rarely contested. It’s time for that to change. We’d love to see some candidates run on a platform of containing employee compensation costs, dealing with perchlorate and flood control issues and preventing any more outrageous rate increases.
