Council Narrowly OKs Big Increase in Sewer Bills to Pay for Renovations : Utilities: Backers call the $74 million in upgrades necessary to protect the health of residents. Critics say the project could be funded without hiking fees.

Exposing the divisiveness among its five members once again, the Thousand Oaks City Council has narrowly approved hefty increases in sewer bills to help fund a $74-million renovation over the next 15 years.

Council members voted 3 to 2 late Tuesday to raise monthly sewer fees from $10.50 to nearly $18, an increase of almost 70%. A hearing to increase connections by about one-third--from $3,900 to more than $5,300--will be held Nov. 7.

Supporters Mike Markey, Andy Fox and Judy Lazar said major improvements to the city’s aging waste-water treatment plant are needed to protect residents’ health. The higher rate is more in line with what other Ventura County cities charge, they said.

But Mayor Jaime Zukowski and Councilwoman Elois Zeanah disagreed, saying the improvements could be funded without raising monthly sewer rates. Zeanah criticized the proposal as a public works department “Christmas list.”

“We should look very carefully at what we could put off, instead of doing everything,” Zeanah said.

The majority of council members, however, said rate increases are necessary to pay for improvements, which are needed because of tougher state water-treatment regulations.

“This, by staff’s definition, is a health and safety issue,” Fox said. “We’re talking about raw sewage . . . This isn’t an item we can kick around for six months.”

Public Works Director Donald H. Nelson recommended that the council do three things: raise the service rate to $17.80 a month; prepare issuing a $13-million bond to be repaid over 15 years, and schedule a public hearing about raising connection fees by about 35%.

“We have aging facilities,” he said. “If we ignore the physical plant, it will deteriorate.”

Nelson said that if the plant fails, the city could be fined $25,000 for every day it does not meet state regulations, and a moratorium on growth could be imposed.

Current residents would be asked to pay only their share of costs related to replacing some parts of the waste-water treatment plant and complying with the new statewide regulations, he said.

New customers would be forced to finance the expansions of the facility, under the recommendation approved Tuesday, he said.

Several times during Tuesday’s discussion, Zukowski questioned whether connection fees had ever been waived for large developers.

Each time Nelson and City Manager Grant Brimhall said they never had. Later in the meeting, however, Brimhall conceded that some $3,900 hookups for “affordable housing” units had been paid from city redevelopment funds.

Nelson said after the vote that the decade-long treatment plant improvement project was thrown off track by the new state regulations and an increase in customers.

A public hearing was scheduled for Nov. 7 for council members to consider raising the hookup fees to $5,310 for each single-family home.

The increased fees would not be charged to the 2,400 or so homes that have been approved but not yet built.

But Brimhall said those future home buyers should be charged a higher monthly rate to make up the $1,410 difference between the fees builders already paid and the impact the homes would have on the system.