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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The next meeting is after the election, but I’ll be there, no matter what happens 3 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"