Ross Valley Sanitary District Raises Sewer Rates

Sewer rates in the Ross Valley Sanitary District are going up.

At a meeting Wednesday night, the district’s board of directors voted 3-2 to approve a rate increase, effective retroactively to July 1. Rates for properties in the district’s coverage areas in Greenbrae, Kentfield, Ross, San Anselmo and Fairfax will rise from $520 to $638 per year (22.7 percent), while rates for Larkspur properties will go up from $592 to $864 per year (45.9 percent). Larkspur’s higher rates stem from the fact that the city does not contribute a share of its property tax revenues to the RVSD.

The rates, adopted by the board in connection with its approval of a new, one-year budget, are lower than the maximums it had earlier proposed in ratepayer notices ($697 for most RVSD ratepayers; $923 for Larkspur ratepayers) and far lower than the board had originally proposed at its first rate hearing in April.

The additional revenues are needed to continue replacing aging sewer lines and making other necessary infrastructure improvements, said board members. The higher increase originally proposed would also have helped build the district’s low reserve accounts to sustainable levels—something the newly approved budget and its associated rate increase will not do.

Directors Patrick Guasco, Marcia Johnson, and Peter Sullivan voted for the rate increase, while directors Frank Egger and Pam Meigs voted against it.

“I’m not up for gutting the budget,” said Guasco. “I frankly think the public still wants to repair pipe and plumbing and force mains and all that. But what I think I hear is that the public wants us to cut it back to where we were when the rates were $520. For me that’s not very realistic for the public, to be able to continue upgrading the system and repairing a system that gets older every day— it’s probably one of the oldest in the state.”

Sullivan echoed that sentiment.

“This is a difficult issue,” he said. “This budget…is a compromise, in that initially we were thinking we would try and correct a long-standing disaster that’s sitting below ground: our 200 miles of pipe that need to be fixed at a much faster rate. And it’s crystal clear from the response that everybody wants the pipes and pumps fixed but nobody wants to pay for it.”

Johnson said the board deserved applause for cutting the budget by a third since it was first presented to the public. “Kudos to us for doing that,” she said.

Egger expressed his desire to see the rate hike be put on the ballot, noting the level of public protest surrounding the issue. He also took issue with many items in the district budget, including high legal costs, board member expenses, and paying for a Sacramento lobbyist, and he suggested several specific budget cuts he believed could be made.

“I think it’s time for us to take a step back and take a deep breath and spend this next year maintaining our status quo operation,” said Egger. “When you look at the letters that came in, it’s obvious that folks don’t understand our operation or are confused by what we’re doing. I’d like to see us spend this next year rebuilding public confidence in the district.”

“Let’s get the community involved with us and let them help us make some decisions about what projects we need to go forward with and what projects we can hold off on,” he added.

Meigs said she had identified some $500,000 in budget items she thought could still be cut, and said she believed “we could tweak it up to $1 million.”

The rate increase has been a contentious issue since it was first proposed in April. The towns of Larkspur, San Anselmo and Fairfax all , and last month, Larkspur businessman . The petition effort heightened local awareness of RVSD issues but failed to get the signatures of a majority of the district’s property owners—the number required to block the increase outright.

Opponents of the hike cited the most recent , which criticized RVSD for, among a laundry list of perceived faults, the high salary it pays its general manager; the decision to replace some (a strategy necessitating the hiring of additional employees) without first vetting the idea with outside consultants; and the “mishandling” of communications with residents and regulatory agencies during and after .

In i, the district stated that the general manager’s salary is commensurate with other general-manager salaries in the area and that the in-house pipe-replacement plan will save the district $500,000 per mile of pipe replaced. The district’s one-word response to the Grand Jury’s finding on the communications issue was simply, “False.”