City Council decides against water use penalties
Update Aug. 6, 2015: At its regular Tuesday night meeting, The Paso Robles City Council decided to dropped consideration of an ordinance designed to aid compliance with the State’s emergency mandatory water conservation orders. The ordinance would have established penalty fees for excessive water use for single family residences that use more than 25 units of water monthly. The decision followed citizen protests against the ordinance at the last council meeting.
Original story:
Council votes to re-draft water use fee structure
– At the most recent Paso Robles City Council meeting, Councilman Steve Gregory pulled an item from the consent agenda and added it to the discussion. The item surrounded the new proposed fee structure for Paso Robles households who use more than the average amount of water per household.
At the July 7 meeting, in order to comply with the Governor’s mandatory water conservation order, an ordinance establishing excessive water use penalties was introduced and approved by the council.
Those fees were proposed for residences with water use that exceeds the following:
- 25 units monthly (One unit = 748 gallons; 25 units = 18,700 gallons) will be charged an additional $10 per unit (for each unit used in excess of 25).
- 50 units monthly will be charged an additional $20 per unit (for each unit used in excess of 50).
Protests were voiced about the potential fee structure, and instead, suggestions were made that all users be required to reduce usage by the same percentage, rather than only larger users. Paso Robles citizen Darrell Cooper came to the meeting to speak about the proposed fees, “From various news sources and this document it says that Paso Robles must reduce water use by 19-percent,” Cooper read. “A percentage of reduction is fine with me and should apply to all users in the city.”
Public Works Director Dick McKinley said that the fee structure is more complicated than just an overall percentage cut. “For some people, it would be more fair,” he said, “but it gets more complicated.” He gave the example that, for a home that uses 22,000 gallons of month currently, they would have to cut approximately 4,000 gallons of water, making their water use still around 18,000 gallons per month after the cuts, whereas a home that was only using 2,200 per month would still have to cut 400 gallons, even though they already used less than the average amount of water per household. This is the reason, McKinley said, why city staff had proposed the original fee structure.
The fee structure was directed back to city staff, who will re-draft it and it will be up for review by the council some time in August, McKinley said.
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