Los Altos Hills customers served by the Purissima Hills Water District will soon notice a slight bump up in their water bills following a district board decision last week to phase in rate increases over the next three years.
The five-member board voted unanimously Oct. 10 to raise customers’ fixed monthly readiness-to-serve charge, which is based on meter size, and their monthly water consumption charge, based on usage and structured by tier. The cost for 3/4-inch meters, the smallest, for example, will increase $2.50 each year from the current rate of $15 to $17.50 starting Nov. 1, to $20 starting July 1 and to $22.50 starting July 1, 2020. Water consumption charges will rise approximately 4 percent across tiers annually through July 1, 2020. The hikes will be reflected in bills mailed in December.
The rate increase, the district’s first since 2015, will fund the replacement of miles of corroding and substandard 1960s-era water pipes that are prone to leaks and considered inadequate for fighting fires. A total of $5 million collected over the next three years will address the most critical sections of the Purissima Hills system, but $18 million is needed over the next 10 years to address the remaining problem pipes.
“I don’t think the customers want us to neglect the system,” said district board member Peter Evans. “If we had roads that needed to be paved, and we were a city, users of those roads would want us to pave them. And I think what this is about is the system is aging, and we’re going to take prudent steps to keep it in good shape, just like people do with their homes.”
The district serves approximately 6,400 residents – two-thirds of Los Altos Hills’ population – and 10 institutional customers with Hetch Hetchy Reservoir water supplied by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
On average, the Purissima Hills Water District system experiences 12 leaks per year, and repairing each one usually costs between $18,000 and $22,000, according to Patrick Walter, the district’s general manager. No leaks were detected in the first six months of 2018, but 14 have occurred in the past two months.
LAH residents weigh in
The district in August notified property owners and tenants of board members’ intent to raise rates, and customers were permitted to submit letters of protest to overturn the proposal, but only five did. Two customers submitted letters of support. Fifteen residents attended last week’s meeting, and the public comment session was divided between praise for the district’s proactivity and complaints about the expense needed to fund it.
“The increases you’re proposing seem to be less than Starbucks on raising the price of lattes and certainly less than Comcast or DirecTV on raising the price on watching the stupid television,” Michael Kuranoff said. “So this is much more important, and I really commend you strongly on that.”
A. Richard Jones said he attended the meeting to “rail against” the readiness-to-serve component of his monthly bill.
“I think the guy who invented that term is a marketing genius because it sounds so much better than ‘arbitrary fee imposed because we can,’” he said.
The new, seismically resilient pipes installed by the district are expected to last more than 200 years, according to Joubin Pakpour, district engineer.
For more information on the rate increases, including charts comparing the water district’s fees with neighboring water districts, visit purissimawater.org/ratesandfinance/rates.html.
