4PM Wednesday, June 6 - Helix WD Board Meeting

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Dear Friends: 
Here is the board package link for our Helix Water District Board Meeting: 

​AGENDA
SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Wednesday, June 6, 4 pm
7811 University Avenue
La Mesa, CA 91942-0427
 

Water Politics:
On May 23rd, I joined other local water leaders to oppose a proposed $135 million per year tax on drinking water in California. Here is an article on the new Water News Network that San Diego County Water Authority.  No to the Water Tax the tax proposal is being advanced through Senate Bill 623 by state Sen. William Monning (Carmel) and a Brown Administration budget trailer bill related to safe drinking water. Be sure to make sure your Legislature votes no! They need to hear from you or we will be required to add a tax on your water bill – and this tax (money) will not be coming back to us, but to other water systems that have groundwater contamination! There are other funding opportunities available to provide for communities that have water contamination as us water agencies have pointed out to the Governor.  The  concern is that if the State starts taxing water bills, it will open the door to more and more taxes! Call, email, tweet your legislatures!
 
Last Helix Meeting Recap (Friday, May 25):
Last meeting the Board met and went over 5 additional proposed water rate scenarios (initially the Board rejected the first staff three proposals -rate increase around 5+%). After much discussion the Board went with Scenario 6 which will be approximately 3.5% increase to the average customer of 21 units.
 
Scenario Selected
Scenario 2 Local water supply from rainfall gradually reducing to zero by fiscal year 2022-23 (we discussed evaluating annually).
Scenario 6 Utilize scenario 2 and then offset the proposed rate increase by: • increasing water sales by 3 percent to 28,500 acre-feet versus the fiscal year 2017-18 budget of 27,700 acre-feet; • using $975,000 from the El Monte Reserve to partially fund the cast iron pipeline replacement program for fiscal year 2018-19; • not making a $750,000 prepayment to CalPERS in 2018-19; and • refilling the rate stabilization fund in fiscal year 2018-19 only to 4 percent versus the 5 percent minimum set by the district's reserve guidelines and revisiting bringing the reserve to the minimum 5 percent level during the fiscal year 2019-20 budget process.

• San Diego County Water Authority anticipated water rate increase is 0.6% of the total increase (included below).

 
Current 2017-18 – 18 Units $151.19
Scenario                                          6
%                                                3.5%
$ Increase                                 $5.33
Proposed 2018-19                $156.52

**This is less than the anticipated 2015 Water Rate Study of 7.1% - 218 Notice.
 
Interesting Agenda Items:
Item 8. Page 92 Action Item - The board adopt the fiscal year 2018-19 preliminary operating budget in the amount of $78,480,100 and the preliminary PayGo capital budget in the amount of $11,093,000.

• The board met on May 2nd and spent over 5 hours reviewing the draft preliminary budget. Here is the updated version that includes some changes that we made when we discussed potential water rate reductions on May 25th.  

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.
 
Please feel free to forward...
 
Kathleen Coates Hedberg, PE, MPH
President, Helix Water District
www.HWD.com
Board Director, San Diego County Water Authority
www.SDCWA.org
www.VoteHedberg.org
www.lakejennings.org (go fishing & camping - teepees)
www.socalwatersmart.com  (rebate link)
 
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