■ Benicia Council expected to lengthen water rate hike at regular meeting

An emergency water surcharge prompted by the state’s drought may be extended Tuesday through the City Council’s adoption of an ordinance amendment on a non-urgent basis, Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth said.

The item is on the Council’s consent calendar, which means the amendment and several other matters are considered routine and may be decided together without comment by a single vote.

Tuesday’s decision would be the latest step in a process that began July 22 when the Council announced its intent to impose the surcharge after a Proposition 218 public hearing.

Under that state law, city employees were required to notify property owners of the hearing and tell them how they could file any protests. Only a handful of landowners objected to the surcharge.

At its Sept. 16 meeting, the Council adopted the emergency ordinance that redefined drought costs and imposed the surcharge to maintain the financial integrity of the Water Enterprise Fund, Wadsworth wrote in a Sept. 25 report to City Manager Brad Kilger.

“The same ordinance was also introduced as a non-urgent ordinance,” he wrote.

The surcharge is defined as temporary, but will remain effective until drought-related costs are recovered and water supply conditions have stabilized, the amendment states. The Council can set rates and end the temporary surcharge by resolution.

Earlier this year, the State Water Project (SWP) announced that Benicia would get none of the 17,000 acre-feet of water for which the city contracts annually because of the current severe drought that is the latest of three years of below-normal rainfall.

Under the city’s contract with California, Benicia must pay for its right to the water, no matter how much is allotted to the city and other contractors. Later, California officials said contractors would get 5 percent of their allotment beginning in September.

Benicia Finance Director Karin Schnaider said drought-related costs could reach as high as $2.58 million. The Council authorized an additional $900,000 for water purchases, and the city had anticipated costs as high as $980,900 for water buys, $134,000 for conservation projects, $264,000 for capital conservation projects and $999,117 for operating expenses.

Through projects funded by Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee settlement agreement grants, those estimated expenditures have been reduced by $200,000, and the surcharges announced last July also have been reduced, Schnaider told the Council Sept. 16.

The revised, per-unit surcharges would be 63 cents for Tier 1, 97 cents for Tier 2 and $1.25 for Tier 3 residential users; and 61 cents for Tier 1 and 86 cents for Tier 2 nonresidential customers.

Among residential customers, Tier 1 uses up to 8 units of water each month. A unit is 748 gallons of water, or as Schnaider described it, “about 50 bathtubs full.”

Tier 2 residential users consume 8 to 30 units a month; Tier 3 residential users consume more than 30 units a month.

Low-income older residents whose water bills are subsidized would not see any increase in charges so long as they use no more than 8 units a month, Schnaider said. Should they exceed that consumption, they would be assessed the same surcharge as their neighbors, she said.

Nonresidential surcharges would be 61 cents a unit for Tier 1, made up of those who limit their use to no more than 30 units, and 86 cents for those who consume more.

In other matters on the Council consent calendar, the panel will consider modifying its contract with Climate Action Plan Coordinator Alex Porteshawver, who has accepted a position with PMC, a planning firm with a climate change team.

Both PMC and Porteshawver’s previous employer, Sonoma State University, which Benicia hired for CAP coordinator services, have agreed to let her continue working in Benicia through June 30, 2015, when the current contract expires.

In other business: 

• The Council will consider making minor changes that update its own conflict of interest code.

• By the same vote, the Council may extend the declaration of a local emergency from the Aug. 24 South Napa earthquake that damaged one First Street building, some water lines and sidewalks and several wastewater treatment structures.

• The panel may approve a labor agreement with the Benicia Firefighters Association that would extend through June 30, 2016.

• It may agree to let Soroptomist International of Benicia use a closet at the former youth center to store non-perishable goods that could be used by Family Resource Center clients.

• Replacing two chemical tanks for the water treatment plant and a community services van also will be decided by the consent calendar vote, as will a decision whether to deny claims against the city filed by Robin Lancaster, who said the city crushed her sewer line, and Dolores Wittkop, who said she fell on the sidewalk at 325 East K St. and broke her elbow.

The Council will meet at 7 Tuesday night in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.