TCWD Board Approves Increased Fiscal Year 2025 Budget
$14M for operations, $5.4M for capital projects, $11.2M reserve balance
By a 4-0 vote, with board president Stephen Dopudja absent from the June 20 meeting, the Trabuco Canyon Water District board approved the district’s fiscal year 2025 (July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025) operating budget of $14M—9% higher than the fiscal year 2024 budget. The budget includes $882k of debt service on the $20M loan the board took out in May, plus staff salary raises of 2% to 16%. The increased spending will be funded by hikes of $439k in “fixed service charges,” $368k in “sewer residential charges,” and $336k in water consumption charges over last year’s budget.
District general manager Fernando Paludi announced that customer water rates would increase July 1, but by less than the amount in the 2023 approved five-year schedule. The reduction was made possible by removing the $5.9M Harris Grade reservoir from the list of capital projects, as discussed by the board during an April 4 special meeting. The amount of reduction was not revealed, nor the amount of increase due to increases in the wholesale cost of water “passed through” to rate payers.
“When I see an increase of over 18% in total salary and benefits, it becomes increasingly difficult to support,” said board member Michael Safranski. But after citing OC’s high cost of living and the need for competitive salaries and benefits to retain staff, Safranski concluded that he would support the increased budget if the staff would commit to “turn over every rock” in search of unnecessary expenses.
One rock that remained unturned at the meeting was Rockspark Communications, the district’s PR consultant, who has billed district rate payers over $91k since December 2022, when given a $31k contract to produce a “rate increase outreach plan” to sell customers the big rate hikes planned for June 2023. Another inconvenient rock left unturned was the package of insurance benefits—medical, dental and vision—provided to board members for their part-time duties, and totaling over $81k in 2023.
TCWD Board Endorses Two Anti Rate-Payer Bills in Sacramento
At a May 6 meeting of the TCWD executive committee, the two board members in attendance voted to support Senate Bill 1072, known as “Proposition 218 Remedies,” authorizing general manager Paludi to sign on to a support letter on behalf of our water district. Paludi said that the bill will allow agencies like TCWD to “protect and defend their rates.”
Readers will recall that Proposition 218, now part of the California Constitution, forbids public water agencies from imposing fees for water services that exceed the cost of actually delivering the service to each residence.
Not surprisingly, water district fees and charges have sparked lawsuits challenging whether the fees and charges are related and proportional to the agencies’ actual costs of providing the service. When they were not, the courts have ordered water districts to refund the overcharges—some in the millions of dollars—directly to the rate payers. Senate Bill 1072 seeks to prohibit such refunds, providing instead that the overcharges remain in the district’s coffers, to be used “only to reduce the subsequently adopted and following property-related fee or charge.”
The obvious intent of this bill is to remove the incentive to challenge Proposition 218 violations in court. If you can’t recover your money, why would you go to court? And what becomes of the overcharges, assuming they somehow are even brought to the attention of a court? Will they ever find their way back to the overcharged victims, or will they be absorbed in the next budget under the usual claims of cost increases and inflation? What do you think?
At their April 4 special meeting, the four board members in attendance voted to endorse yet another legislative attack on rate payers, Assembly Bill 1827 In apparent contravention of Proposition 218, this bill would explicitly allow water districts to set fees and charges based on maximum potential water use, or projected peak water usage. It would thereby legitimize TCWD’s absurd “timeshare condo” rate scheme, where ”you pay whether you use it or not.”
Please ask your state representatives to oppose these unconstitutional bills that will only embolden out-of-control water districts like TCWD to further bury their customers under more outrageous fees and charges. Let them know that you live in the TCWD and were never asked by your water board if you supported these bills. Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, State Senator Catherine Blakespear.
As for our nominal “representatives” on the water board, they don’t seem to have any grasp of the concept. Was it too much to expect at least one of them to say “I’m not sure our rate payers would like us to support these bills—maybe we should ask them”?
The volunteers who conducted the recall campaign will be supporting two new board candidates in the November election, candidates who understand their role as representatives of the rate payers. Please watch this site in the coming months for the kickoff of their campaign.
Results of Our May 29 Poll
“Do you support consolidation of the TCWD with a neighboring water district if it will lower your water bills substantially?”
yes—97%
no—3%
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Again, many thanks for continuing to dig into the highly questionable practices of this mismanaged water district. I found the "puff piece" featuring the incumbent director totally inappropriate given the proximity to the election. We don't need a fiefdom. We need an efficiently run water district. Vote for change! Vote for Anderson & Horst!
Thanks for continuing to shine a light on this egregious mismanagement. The meter size add-on is a convenient way for this board to continue to stick it to us while encouraging us to waste water. I was appalled at the "promotional video" of the "honorable" Dopudja and the money spent on it using our ratepayer dollars. To know that MWDOC has a contractual relationship with his consulting firm further raises the stink factor and should be investigated. Seems this was a timely political piece for him given the election is less than two months away. I'm voting for Anderson & Horst!