County Says Haste Caused Mistake in Sewer Estimate

A top Los Angeles County official told a Malibu citizens committee Tuesday that the county made a mistake when it announced two months ago that a proposed sewer system would cost Malibu homeowners an average of just $4,000.

According to new estimates released Tuesday, Malibu homeowners will be billed about $8,200 on average if the Board of Supervisors approves the $39-million sewer system after a hearing Jan. 12.

“Frankly, I think (the earlier number) was wrong, that we used the wrong number to divide,” Deputy Public Works Director Harry Stone told the citizens committee Tuesday night. “Everybody was hurrying to get the report done, and I think the number was erroneous.”

The earlier figure underestimated hookup costs by $2,000 to $3,000 per home, said Stone and analysts on his staff. Also, in calculating assessments it was not taken into account whether parcels were developed or undeveloped. The new estimate raises the project’s overall cost by $5 million.

The original estimate of homeowner costs has “obviously” harmed the county’s latest attempt to gain broad community support for a sewer in Malibu, Stone said in an interview after the meeting at Pepperdine University.

“It misled people,” he said. “It misled all of us until we saw the real numbers.”

Some members of the committee, which in October endorsed the sewer plan partly because of its relatively low cost, expressed surprise at the new figures. And some predicted an angry response from Malibu residents, most of whom have fought county sewer proposals in a variety of forms for two decades.

“That’s why I brought the numbers (to the committee),” Stone responded, “so at least you people would understand them.”

From Stone’s perspective, the new estimates still represent substantial savings for home and business owners over the $86-million proposal the Board of Supervisors had backed before a confrontation with 1,000 angry Malibu residents in county chambers last fall.

Lower Taxes

“We’re looking at costs of two-thirds to less than half what it would have been under the ($86-million) plan,” Stone said.

For example, taxes on the area’s 1,700 homes and individual apartments average $8,200 under the new plan, with assessments on three-fourths of them at $9,999. That compares with a tax of $13,000 per home, plus hookup fees of $2,000 to $15,000 under the old plan, he said.

Fees on businesses would also be much lower than under the $86-million proposal, Stone said. For example, Pepperdine University would have paid $8.8 million under the old proposal but would be taxed only $3.3 million under the new one, he said.

The point was not lost on committee member Andrew K. Benton, vice president for administration at Pepperdine. “Any reduction from the $8.8 million is going to be pleasing to the university,” he said.

Committee member Roy Crummer, whose family is the major commercial landowner in the Civic Center, said he is also assuming that assessments under the new plan will be perhaps half of the $14-million levy he faced under the old one.

Response Uncertain

“I think it’s hard to know what the response to this will be in Malibu,” Crummer said. “But I think if the county and the citizens committee do a good job of explaining (the advantages of the new plan), the community will be overwhelmingly in favor of the alternative system.”

Both the $86-million proposal and the alternative will be considered by the supervisors at the January meeting. However, public comment will be accepted only on the new proposal.

The $39-million proposal calls for construction of a treatment plant in Malibu’s Civic Center area and a pumping system that would carry waste water up to 7 miles from septic tanks in troubled landslide areas, such as Big Rock Mesa.

Sewer costs and tax assessments will be substantially lower for property owners in the Civic Center area, Stone said, because of lower hookup and pumping costs. Gravity will force the flow of sewage to the treatment plant in the Civic Center, while costly new tanks and pumps will have to be installed at homes and businesses outside the area to push waste water into sewer lines and to the treatment plant.

Committee member John Sibert asked if that did not mean that homeowners, a large majority of whom live outside the Civic Center, were carrying a disproportionate share of the cost of the sewer.

Basic Fee

“If your question is, ‘Are we trying to load it up on single-family homes?’, the answer is just the opposite,” Stone said.

When costs could logically be assessed to all property owners throughout the proposed sewer district, they were, Stone said. For example, nearly all property owners will pay a basic fee for construction of the new sewer plant and all its pipelines, he said.

Only owners of parcels that cannot be developed because of landslide hazards are exempt from that basic fee, he said. Owners of 154 homes in the Pepperdine area and the university itself are hooked into an existing sewer system and will pay only part of the basic fee.

Homeowners generally do pay higher hookup costs, Stone said, only because their properties are outside the Civic Center, and connection and pumping costs are higher. Connection fees account for $5,122 of the $9,999 tax that 1,251 homeowners each will be assessed, staff analysts said. Homeowners who do not hook up to the sewer, depending instead on county-approved septic systems, would be charged about $3,000 less in hook-up fees, Stone said. If they eventually hook up, the charge would be reinstated.

About two-thirds of the sewer’s $39-million cost will be paid by assessments on businesses and about one-third by taxes on homeowners, analysts told the committee.

Notices of sewer assessments should be mailed to all property owners by next week, Stone said.