No budget yet
I haven’t experienced SCVWD budget workshops before, but the ones this week are, by the Board’s report, much more detailed than in the past. So detailed, in fact, that three extra days this past week were not enough to cover everything. Yesterday afternoon, the Board decided to postpone accepting the draft budget and setting the groundwater charges until a special meeting on 9 June in the afternoon, starting at 1:30 pm. This puts San Jose Water Company at least nine days behind in setting its own water rates, since investor-owned utilities must file their proposed charges with the Public Utilities Commission 30 days in advance, and 1 July was the deadline that they had been working with.
The Board did take several cost-cutting actions in what they’ve done so far. They’ve directed staff to cut requested overtime by 50%, to cut the $5.2 million requested for temporary staff by $1 million, and accepted staff-proposed reductions in requests for consultants by $3.8 million out of $42 million, with the instructions to look for further savings, especially in use of consultants in operations, during the year. They’ve reduced the amount requested for travel, as I posted about before, and given general direction to streamline the hiring process and forego the use of temporary staff in what should be permanent positions.
The Board has also taken action lately that has added about $1 million to the proposed budget: $280,000 for the boat inspection program and $825,000 for early implementation of the FAHCE agreement.
In general, I’ve noticed that it’s been easier for the Board to ask for reductions in areas that involve smaller amounts of money. The requested overtime budget was $2.4 million, and Director Estremera quickly made a successful motion to cut that in half. The requested budget for consultants used in operations, however, is $17 million. Director Kwok proposed cutting that in half, based on both a philosophical disagreement with using consultants for operations, as well as on the fact that the District has only so far spent $8 million out of the $20 million it budgeted for operations consultants last year. The rest of the Board, however, was reluctant to go along with this, and ended up accepting staff’s suggestion for slightly less than a 10% reduction in the whole consultant budget.
The next meeting is after the election, but I’ll be there, no matter what happens 3 June.
Diana,
Thanks for putting the Water District’s budget on your blog for the community to review, along with yours and others comments.
My first observation is that this draft is primarily an attempt to increase the apparent budget of the District by greatly inflating the capital outlay budget, thereby reducing the projected reserves of the District, which are quite high, even with this ploy in place.
Last year, the District spent $31.5 million less than they budgeted for capital outlay.
($171.4 million).
This draft claims the District will spend $229.4 Million. If the District performed well enough to get the same percentage accomplished this year (80%), that would leave $ 45 million unspent and essentially increase the reserves, while the number never shows up in that column.
I’m not sure what the District is actually capable of managing in terms of construction management, especially with the Board trying to look like they know what was best for asuuring that the NECESSARY work gets done.
Pat,
I’m not sure what you mean by “the Board trying to look like they know what was best for assuring that the NECESSARY work gets done.”
Could you please elaborate? I’m curious.
Thanks.
Dear Long Time Resident;
Time to buy a name.
My sarcastic comment is in relation to the gross action that the Board is currently taking e.g. cutting overtime or millions from the consultant budget. This kind of response is intended for future press releases or constituent criticisms.
This Board does not fully grasp what the District could be or should be. The enormous scope of what the District projects to be (“Protecting Our Future” or even Watershed Stewards)
Natural flood protection is an oxymoron, yet $40 million/yr goes into the District coffers from Measure B to fix the flooding hazards caused by City and County land use decisions and blessed by FEMA’s allowances for padding up development in flood-prone areas.
Most of the Water Utility Enterprise is designed to assure San Jose Water Company has enough product to sell and make their stockholders 20% profit. Depending on Delta water for 50% of our water supply has proven the risk of living at the end of a continuously shrinking straw, instead of investing in locally controlled supplies of recycled water. The State and Federal water contracts continue as the major distraction for this shift back to local sources, since the mortgage payments and O&M costs now exceed $40 million per year.
The San Luis bypass project is the worst example ever for “throwing good money after bad”
This is probably enough to adsorb for one post.
If you’d like more, please identify yourself.
Never Thirst!
Pat Ferraro