Public Hearing on Water Rate Increases Scheduled for Monday’s City Council Meeting

The City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on water rate increases on Monday.

According to information released by the city over the past several months, PWP customers could see a 13 to17% raise in their water bills over the next year as new rates go into effect next month.

City staff is recommending two increases. The first 7.1% increase would take place on April 1 and a 7.2% increase would go into effect at the beginning of the year.

PWP has a service area of 26 miles, serving a population of 172,000, with more than 38,000 water accounts. The water system itself consists of 520 miles of water mains, seven active wells, 14 reservoirs and 19 booster stations. Many of the original water mains actually date back nearly 100 years, said PWP Engineer Chris Ojeda in a meeting last week.

The city operates the water system as a self-supporting enterprise. To ensure financial stability, PWP prepares a five-year financial plan that is updated annually and includes revenue requirements to meet all operation and maintenance expenses, debt service requirements, annual system improvements, replacements of capital infrastructure, and other costs. The five-year plan is a critical component of preparing the annual operating and capital budgets for the Water System. The five-year financial plan prepared for FY2022 through FY2026 determined that revenues from projected sales and existing rates are insufficient to recover projected expenses.

In correspondence to the City Council, many local residents asked that the rates not be increased.

“How can you justify building thousands and thousands and thousands of new condominium and apartment units in this city (ruining it) when we don’t have enough water in the first place?!?,” said Joyce Graham. “Many Pasadenans want an answer to this question! And then you go and try to increase the rates too?! This is wrong and a very outrageous decision! It is obvious that Pasadena is being greedy and they want more and more money to come into the City to put in their own pockets [i.e., salaries & retirement].”

The City Council will also vote on amending the city’s water rate ordinance.

The Water Rate Ordinance sets forth the rates for water and water service to be charged and collected by the Water Division of the city, according to a city staff report.

The rate hikes are required because of increases in the cost of purchased water from the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) as well as higher departmental operating and maintenance costs.

The increase in the city’s commodity charge will provide additional annual revenue of approximately $1.5 to $2 million while the increase in the Distribution and Customer Charge (D&C) will provide additional annual revenue of $1 million.