AF Asks Discount on Sewer Hookup for New Housing

The Air Force, backed by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, is asking the Los Angeles City Council for a $97,000 break on the sewer hookup fee it must pay for its new housing development in San Pedro--a waiver the city’s administrative staff says “would only establish an undesirable precedent.”

“Certainly,” writes City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie in a report to the council, “the Air Force, as an agency of the federal government, has the financial capability to pay in full what is owed.”

The Air Force, which built 170 units of housing on two sites near the intersection of 25th Street and Western Avenue, is seeking to pay the city at the 1987 rate, which is less than half the current rate.

Although the housing was hooked up to the sewer system last December, the Air Force has yet to apply for a permit or pay the hookup fee to the city, both of which are required by law.

Rates to Rise Again

Air Force officials say they are waiting for a decision from the City Council before making payment. Under current rates, the Air Force owes $190,944, but has asked to pay the city $93,483 instead.

The council will take up the matter June 21. The Air Force has asked for a speedy decision, because the rates go up again, this time by 16%, on June 26. If the permit application comes in after that date, the Air Force would owe the city $221,332.

There is no provision in city law for granting exemptions to the one-time sewer hookup fee. If the council grants the waiver, it will have to amend the city’s ordinance to do so.

Such amendments have been adopted twice, once for charitable hospitals and once for nonprofit, low-income housing for senior citizens and disabled persons. Those exemptions, Comrie wrote in his report, “are at least of citywide benefit and not limited to a specific development.”

But an aide to Councilwoman Flores said the break would benefit the city--or at least the residents of San Pedro. Flores deputy Mario Juravich said his boss is backing the Air Force’s request because the Air Force has promised to use the money it would save to landscape its San Pedro developments at White Point and the former Bogdanovich Park.

“On behalf of our constituency, we don’t want that project to look the way it does now,” said Juravich. “We want landscaping.”

Includes Discount

The $93,483 the Air Force would like to pay is based on the 1987 rate of $846 a unit. It includes a discount of nearly $50,000 because Los Angeles County, not the city, will be treating some of the waste from the project. At the current rate of $1,728 per unit, the Air Force owes the city $190,944, including the discount.

Air Force officials maintain they are entitled to pay under the 1987 rate because they would have applied for the permit in 1987, had their contractor not forgotten to file the application.

“We made a mistake,” said Lt. Col. Craig Birch, the Air Force official who supervised the development.

But city officials say that even if the Air Force had applied for the permit in 1987, it still would have been required to pay at the current rate, because the hookup was not completed until 1988.

Pay Difference

City law requires that if there is a rate increase between the time a permit is received by the developer and the hookup is completed, the applicant must pay the difference.

The situation that the Air Force is in--having hooked up to the sewer system before applying for the permit--is a fluke. Under normal circumstances, developers obtain various city building permits and projects are inspected before and during construction to comply with the city building code. If a developer has not obtained the required approvals and paid the necessary fees, city inspectors will not issue an occupancy permit allowing people to move in.

But because the Air Force housing is on federal land, the project is exempt from the city building code and was not inspected by city officials.

City officials did not learn that the Air Force was not in compliance until Air Force officials, wondering why they had not received a bill for the sewer hookup, called the city.

Air Force officials and Flores have said the break is justified because the Air Force unexpectedly spent nearly $750,000 of its $15.3-million housing budget to clean up toxic waste it discovered at the White Point site. A small part of the cleanup, which was conducted before the housing was built, occurred on what is now city property at White Point Park, next to the housing site.

But Dee Carey, the legislative analyst who drafted Comrie’s report, said that argument is not convincing, given that the city property was until recently part of the White Point military installation and waste was left there by the Army, which formerly occupied the site. Military officials across the country are required to conduct similar cleanups when they discover toxic waste on their land, she said.

“There’s no basis for waiving one fee because they spent money they would have had to spend in the first place to clean up that property,” she said.