Dear City Council Members,
I wrote earlier about my concerns regarding the proposed water rate rules and the effects this will have on residents who live in older multi-family dwellings that have a single water meter.
The Menlo Park Water District serves the far western and far eastern portions of the City. While it might seem possible to shrug off the concerns of residents in the western part of the district – “those people have money, so what’s the big deal”. I don’t think anyone would feel they could easily make that assumption about those residing in multi-family complexes east of El Camino.
Water is vital to life. Water is disappearing. Drought years occur more often than non-drought years. Those of us living in multi-family units are already doing our part to reduce our water demands and our carbon footprint.
Yet, the proposed rates are founded on the supposition that in residential areas a single meter serves a single home. This is obviously untrue. Some landlords apportion the water bill to each unit – which might sound fair until you realize they are essentially being billed as commercial buildings that have much lower necessary water needs than family dwellings.
Hence families living a more earth friendly lifestyle will be both punished by much higher water bills and effectively forced to subsidize the single family units. You can stop this in its tracks. This passage from the opinion piece clearly describes the inequity that is currently proposed.
As Mr. Siegel said in his guest opinion in the Menlo Almanac on April 9, 2021 : (https://www.almanacnews.com/print/story/2021/04/09/not-just-a-drop-in-the-bucket)
For example, I live in a condominium complex that has one meter measuring the water usage of 57 families. For our water meter to measure usage in tier 2 for the month, every single person in the 57 families would have to use less than 2 gallons of water a day (110/57), or just one flush of a low-flow toilet per day! This is clearly not possible and in fact, our water meter goes into tier 3 by the second day of the month. Multifamily residences are essentially stuck in tier 3 even if they practice exceptional water conservation, and are charged a water consumption rate that is 71% higher than tier 1 and 27% higher than tier 2. Clearly an increasing tier structure is unfair and doesn't promote conservation for multifamily residences. The inequity impact gets worse over the five-year horizon of the proposed water rates. In 2022 multifamily residences will represent 6.84% of all residences, and this percentage grows to 9.93% as a result of a 40% increase in multifamily residential connections over the next five years.
So please look at this issue carefully and direct the MP Water District to come up with a broader approach to rates. Wouldn’t it be better to prevent a problem rather than having to respond after the fact? Think of this as a canary singing out a warning and establish equity from the start – that is when real social justice change will come. I ask this as a resident, as a person who can speak for those who have little opportunity to speak, and as a Quaker.
Thank you for your attention and all the good work you do on the many issues facing Menlo Park.
Peace,
Virginia Talley Kenyon
2351 Sharon Road, Menlo Park
April 25, 2021
