Mesa Water awards contract for study of merger with sanitary district
For all the talk so far of merging with the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, Mesa Water District board members stressed one word this week — preliminary.
That’s how they repeatedly described the step they took Thursday to award a contract to study whether combining the two agencies could save ratepayers money.
“Every election cycle these questions come up as to, ‘Do we need two special districts with two government agencies, one for specifically water and one specifically for sanitation?’” Mesa Water President Shawn Dewane said Thursday. “That’s the question that’s asked, and a study like this is simply designed and being taken up to answer that question.”
Board members voted unanimously to award a $29,960 contract to Arcadis U.S. Inc. for the study. The sanitary district hasn’t yet voted on whether to join in the effort.
“I am supportive of this preliminary study because that’s what it is — an early study to look at whether there’s merit to pursuing this any further or not,” said Mesa Water board member Jim Atkinson.
The sanitary district provides sewer and curbside trash collection services to about 116,700 ratepayers in Costa Mesa, parts of Newport Beach and unincorporated sections of Orange County.
Mesa Water provides service to about 110,000 people in a similar area.
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Sanitary district board members this week took issue with the process thus far, saying they didn’t have a voice in picking the consultant to do the study or a proper role in shaping what the consultant will examine.
The effort shouldn’t be funded until both agencies “have had an opportunity to jointly work on a study,” sanitary district board member Bob Ooten told Mesa Water’s board during Thursday’s meeting.
“That’s what the sanitary district has proposed, and it doesn’t appear that any of you are listening,” he added.
Mesa Water board members, though, insisted that the sanitary district has been kept in the loop throughout the process.
“To say we’re not listening is really not fair to us, so I really don’t take kindly to that,” said Ethan Temianka, the board’s vice president.
Dewane sent a letter to the sanitary district on April 22 asking if the two agencies could work together on the study to determine whether a merger would make operational and financial sense.
The sanitary district didn’t officially respond until May 23, after Dewane had sent a follow-up letter.
The concept of merging the two agencies is not new, Temianka said, and ratepayers deserve to know if doing so would save them money.
“This is something that’s been talked about for 20 years,” he said. “I’m not one to sit around and talk about this for another 20 years. I got on this board to make some changes, to make positive impacts on the ratepayers. We think there are a lot of savings here. We could be wrong. We’re going to find that out.”
It’s also not unheard of for agencies to merge, but that hasn’t been a common occurrence in recent years, said Carolyn Emery, executive officer for the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, which reviews consolidation requests from special districts.
Sometimes it turns out merging districts wouldn’t reduce costs, Emery said. Other times there are political reasons that could doom a consolidation.
“It all has to pencil out,” Emery said. “Sometimes that’s a challenge.”
When it comes to consolidation requests, Emery said, primarily what the commission looks at is what the impacts to ratepayers would be and whether a joint agency would be effective and viable in the long term.
Mesa Water board member Jim Fisler, who also is a LAFCO commissioner, said that’s exactly what the study seeks to do.
“It’s not going after any district,” he said. “It’s a study to see if there is a way to save money for the ratepayers.”
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Luke Money, lucas.money@latimes.com
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
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