Newport has very interesting rates

             I have a new Facebook friend.  Her profile said that she lives in Newport, Oregon so I looked up your water and sewer rates.  These are unique in my experience in that you charge people outside the city the same as inside the city.  You have only about 10,680 people in the city, so you apparently are trying for as many customers as you can get to share the overhead.  I heard you have about 15,000 customers.  You could probably attract more if you make your minimum charges cover your overhead, lower unit rates to actual unit costs, and drop the low-income discounts.

            If Newport uses its minimum charges to cover all overhead plus unit costs within the minimums, low-income households won’t need discounts.  It isn’t base rates or monthly minimum charges that kill budgets; it’s high unit rates.  Low-income people who live many to a house can’t stay within the minimum charge or even close to it when unit rates are high.

This goes double for sewer rates, units for which are generally calculated from winter water use, which is presumed to all go down the sewer.  Three of the thirteen cities on our rate comparison chart still charge no unit rates on sewer: Portland, Oregon; Medford, Oregon; and Redding, California. 

Unit charges on sewage is a relatively new way to ration water and is particularly unfair to low-income people who live many to a house.  Your customers can’t cut the amount of waste they put down the drain, but they can cut their use of the water needed to carry their waste to the wastewater plant.  Get rid of unit rates on sewer and make water units cheap again.  The poor and middle class will be able to afford them again, and sewer pumps and pipes will be less likely to clog.  

Newport has only three water unit rates: Residential, including Single Family and Multi-Family; Commercial, which includes governments; and Single Family low income qualified, which has a 30% discount.  You have no such discount on water for Multi-Family, likely because apartment landlords pay city utilities for their residents.  Few unit rates are a good thing.  A single unit rate would be better.

Newport's unit rates are otherwise flat (no tiers) and pretty high: $4.24/1000 gallons for Residential; 4.77/1000 for Commercial; and $2.96/1000 for Single Family low income.  These are water-rationing rates, but I have yet to find a city without them.  They are remarkable in that residents have lower rates than non-residential users.

Newport doesn’t have base rates, but rather minimum charges according to service size, which are obviously not designed to cover all the overhead, at $19.61 for Single Family Residential 5/8”-3/4” and $13.73 for Single Family 5/8”-3/4” low income, which buys 4,625 gallons and 4,623 gallons respectively.  Multi-Family minimum charge starts at $37.42, which is likely what your minimum charge for 5/8”-3/4” would be if your minimums covered the overhead, as the city wants to get that covered whether an apartment is rented or not. 

            Your wastewater unit rates are also high.  They run $6.62 for Single Family and duplexes, with a minimum charge of 25.81, and $4.63/1000 for Single Family and duplexes low income, minimum $18.07.  Multi-family is $9.82/1000, minimum $29.76.  This is the same as paid by Commercial, which also has extra charges for Extra Strength waste that needs more biochemical oxygen. 

The biggest problem with water-rationing rates is that they cause rates to rise far faster than inflation.  High unit rates are designed to cut use, but low minimums or base rates depend on use to pay part of the overhead.  When they work as designed and people cut back on use to save money, rates must be raised to cover the overhead.  Raising unit rates causes lower use, so they have to be raised again, which further lowers use and rates are raised again.

This vicious pricing spiral continues until people can’t cut back any further.  Seattle may have gotten to that point with water at $15.78/1000g on their highest tier inside the city and over $18 outside it.  Everybody ends up paying more and more to use less and less water with water-rationing rates.

            In any case, high unit rates are not justified by the need to pay for water and sewer plants; they make it harder, not easier.  Their impact on household and business budgets hurts lower and middle-class households who use city water and sewer plants and every sector of our economy except water and sewer rate consultants.  They also reduce hygiene, fire safety, and the beauty and livability of our cities.

Newport may regret these rates if Oregon has another katabatic wind event like September 8, 2020 that blows wildfire right through your town.  Keeping property watered stores moisture in plants and soil and keeps deciduous trees too wet to burn.  You should be encouraging irrigation, not discouraging it.

            Coastal cities have problems with seawater infiltrating their fresh ground water.  More irrigation can fill aquifers and keep the seawater out.  Florida is probably having this problem because they are also rationing water by price and discouraging irrigation.

            I believe that Grants Pass also had minimum charges instead of base rates when I lived here for two years in the ‘80s, because I recall my utility bills being flat except in summer, when unit charges added only pennies to my bill.

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Plant Red Maples, not Swamp Oaks

 

Honorable Mayor, Council and Manager,

            At the December 14th workshop, you discussed what kind of trees should be planted on the Washington Boulevard median after the declining flowering cherries are taken out.  The city’s Tree Advisory Committee was split on the matter; some wanted to continue the row of red maples, but more members wanted diversity, so the group recommended white swamp oak. 

A couple of councilors who live on that street objected to the committee’s choice of oaks.  Oaks drop acorns; squirrels love them; squirrels are destructive; and they already have a squirrel problem. 

Diversity is overrated in city street trees.  Continuing that nice line of red maple would lend consistency to the median and make a beautiful show in the fall, even if they will be smaller than the current trees for some time to come.  Red maples grow faster than oaks, particularly when young, and should catch up to the other red maples as the older trees mature.

I love red maple leaves: I raked up a truck load last fall from around one large, lone tree in that median for mulch.  Red maple leaves resist rot as well as oak, keeping soil covered through the summer.  The leaves I gathered were still in perfect condition, not sticking together as I spread them in my garden yesterday, although they were wet in the bags for two months.  Their leaves don’t blow around like oak leaves do, being flat.

Oaks should not be planted near pavements.  Round acorns are a hazard to cyclists, turn ankles and make a mess in the road when run over.  Crows drop acorns and walnuts on pavements just to get them run over so they can eat nut meat. 

Swamp oaks drop their leaves in the spring, and their dead leaves hang on all winter.  City crews would have to clean up leaves along that median in fall and spring.  Indeed, oaks are some of the dirtiest trees we have, dropping not only leaves and nuts, but flowers, many twigs, and lichen.

Maples have smaller seeds that don’t store well for squirrels and don’t roll underfoot.  They are surface rooters that will not likely get into the pipes they are planted near and don’t bother grass growing beneath them.  

Before we planted the present red maples, we had all flowering cherries on that median.  It would have been better to replace all of them at the same time, but it will be good to continue with what already works.

Photo courtesy of Wordpress.com

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1-20-2021

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Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener        541-955-9040             rycke@gardener.com

We may not need a new water plant

 

Honorable Council, Mayor and Manager,

            I was wrong.  I apologize to the ratepayers, Copeland, and all other businesses on their property.  I was wrong to support taking any part of their property to build a new water plant before all options for fixing the old plant are exhausted.

            I was taken in for years, until last week, by Staff’s assertion that the old plant cannot be fixed because the only clear well is falling apart and we can’t fix it in the time it would take for us to run out of clean water.  But how big is a clear well?  Can we not build a new one outside the present footprint of the building and use it while we fix the old one?  Then we can have two and be able to maintain each as needed.  We can proceed to fix the rest of the failing masonry while doing seismic retrofitting and then keep it maintained.  We can certainly do it for less than $81 million. 

            At Monday’s workshop, Staff went over the history of the planning for a new water plant.  A second clear well at the old plant apparently has never been considered. 

Staff did say that they considered taking several properties next to the plant to rebuild parts of the old plant while operating it, but that it would be too complicated to have to negotiate with several landowners.  As though negotiating with the Auslands, helping them and their multiple dependent businesses relocate, and paying for all that is simple or cheap?  We have been negotiating for well over a year, and now we will have to go to trial of the need to build a new plant, with full discovery, to justify taking their property.

Staff also said that they were looking at the possibility of eventually expanding the new plant to use all of our 45-million-gallon-a-day water right.  That can also be done by expansion of the old site and plant as needed.

Staff said that, of the three water-cleaning technology options for a new plant, the conventional system that we already use is the most expensive to build but is cheapest to operate.  We already have it; we don’t need to build much more of it right now. 

Operations go on forever.  Ratepayers would thank you to keep the technology that will cost us less in the long run, in that historic building that only needs to be expanded, fixed, seismically retrofitted, and maintained to last into the next century and beyond.

 Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 1-6-2021

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener      541-955-9040         rycke@gardener.com