City Raises Water, Sewer Rates : Ventura: To keep up utility revenues, a family of four will pay about 12.5% more while using less.

The second water and sewer rate increase to hit Ventura residents in 10 months left some wondering Tuesday why they are paying more for using less.

The City Council approved a new rate structure Monday for all customers that will increase combined water and sewer bills by 12.5% for an average four-member household. This was added to a 44% water rate increase and a 27% sewer rate increase that the council approved last June after imposing mandatory water rationing.

City officials have said they had to raise the rates to keep enough money coming in to support the water and sewer systems at a time when Ventura residents are buying less water.

But the rate increases angered some residents, who said they gave up a lot of luxuries by conserving water after mandatory rationing went into effect in April, 1990.

“To go without and for the price to go up is kind of tough,” said Rick Ramsdell of Ralston Street. “It’s like, ‘Kick him when he’s down.’ ”

Ramsdell said his lawn is browner, his swimming pool is dirtier and his water bill is higher than before mandatory water conservation. He said he has installed low-flow shower heads and low-volume toilets, his wife and son try to conserve water, and he has let his flowers wither.

Ramsdell said the new rate increases leave him wondering, “ ‘Are we being gouged? Are we being taken advantage of? Are we doing the best we can do?’. . . . It’s getting very expensive. I don’t know what to do anymore. We can’t do without water.”

His neighbor Roy Bryant said the previous rate increase nearly doubled his water bill, despite his family’s ability to cut its consumption to 194 gallons per day--100 gallons a day less the city allotted them.

“I don’t like it,” Bryant said of the new rate increase. “I don’t think the everyday consumers like us should be paying it. I think the commercial customers should be paying it.”

“For the people who are out there conserving the water, it’s not fair,” said Linda Garcia of Barry Drive, who helps her elderly parents pay the water and sewer bills at their Simpson Street home. “I think the people who are wasting more of the water should be billed.”

But city officials say they need the extra money to keep the pumps and pipes going and to make up for revenues lost to conservation efforts, which have reduced Ventura’s water consumption by 25%.

“There’s a lot of fixed costs in the system,” said Terry Adelman, Ventura’s finance director. “If you decide you’re going to use less water, those costs don’t go away. You still have to maintain them.”

This year, the city began paying off loans that helped fund a $3.5-million well and treatment facility in Saticoy and finance $4.2 million in new equipment for a reservoir system that had been in operation since 1939, Adelman said.

City information officer Carol Green said the sewer rates increased to pay for the higher cost of treating sewage that is more concentrated because people are using less water.

“We have historically raised water rates on an annual basis. That’s not an unusual thing to do,” Green said. “You want to do that rather than wait five years and have a humongous increase.”

Commercial water users have been working with city water inspectors to reduce their consumption.

The Doubletree Hotel, for instance, is using about 30% less water than it did before rationing went into effect, General Manager Jerry Tononi said.

But the hotel’s water bill is about 10% higher, he said.

“I see it as something that’s inevitable, based on conservation, and frankly, water was too cheap in the beginning,” Tononi said. “As a business, we saw it coming. It’s the old supply and demand: How are they going to pay their bills if people are buying less of their product, unless they raise their prices?”

Even some residents saw the rate increases as a necessary side effect of the water shortage.

“I think it’s fair. Everybody has to do their share,” said Gloria Gularte of Cobblestone Drive. “We have really been watching it and changing our habits. It becomes kind of a fixation after a bit. My only complaint is it’s not countywide.”