We
’re having a difficult time conjuring up much sympathy for Santa
Clara Valley Water District officials who were not prepared for the
amount of money the state is taking from them as a part of last
July’s state budget crisis settlement.
We’re having a difficult time conjuring up much sympathy for Santa Clara Valley Water District officials who were not prepared for the amount of money the state is taking from them as a part of last July’s state budget crisis settlement.
Water district officials have said they were expecting to give up $11 million under the agreement that allows the state to take a larger share than normal of property taxes for the next two years. This year, the state will be taking $25 million.
Our first reaction is why weren’t water district officials prepared? Have they been living under rocks for the past several years? The state has been in a years-long, chronic budget crisis. Much of the property tax deal to bail out the state was well-known to anyone who follows state government. Why was the number a surprise to the well-paid water district officials? Why did they fail to plan for it?
Predictably, the first solution to pop into water district officials’ minds is to raise fees and cut basic, necessary services, like flood control. That’s the wrong approach.
The first reaction should be to cut waste, to lower inflated salaries, to trim fat benefits packages, and to eliminate unnecessary services, like newsletters, pricey public relations personnel and advertising campaigns.
Remember, this is the same agency that approved a whopping 25 percent rate increase less than six months ago. This is the same agency that thinks it needs 900 employees to serve 1.5 million water customers. This is the same agency that pays vested employees 70 percent of their final salary as retirement pay.
We think it’s well past time for the district to cut back to the bare essentials: providing clean, safe water and preventing floods.
Anything that doesn’t contribute directly to those two aims is dispensable and should be dispensed with immediately. We can live without slick web sites, snazzy newsletters, expensive spokesmen and pricey commercials.
We can’t live without clean water and dry homes and businesses – and at the rates we pay the water district now, we shouldn’t have to.
When the fiscal crisis passes, then the water district board can consider resuming some of the suspended services – but only after they have been thoroughly evaluated on a cost versus efficacy matrix.
In the meantime, it’s unfair and unethical to threaten overtaxed rate payers with rate hikes and flood control program cuts. We encourage South Valley residents to make their opinions on this subject known to the water district board loudly and in great numbers.
If the state budget crisis finally brings water district officials to the long-overdue realization that there’s plenty of fat to be cut in the water district, then there will be a silver lining to this fiscal cloud.
