Mesa Water wants to renew talks about merger with sanitary district
Despite almost a year of at-times contentious disagreement, Mesa Water District board members plan to again ask for their Costa Mesa Sanitary District counterparts’ agreement to further study the possibility of merging the two agencies.
Mesa Water’s board voted 3-2 Thursday to send a letter inviting the sanitary district to jointly ask the Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, for a municipal service review of the two agencies. Vice President Jim Atkinson and member Fred Bockmiller dissented.
Such reviews are studies of “future growth and how our local agencies are planning for that growth within our municipal services and infrastructure systems,” according to LAFCO’s website.
Mesa Water board members said Thursday that a municipal service review, or MSR, would provide detailed information on whether consolidating with the sanitary district would increase operational efficiency or lead to savings for ratepayers.
LAFCO would also have the final say on any proposed merger.
“Collectively, we have some good here to do, and our friends at the sanitary district — in the spirit of good faith and fair dealing — I would encourage them to join us in serving the public who elects us,” board member Shawn Dewane said.
Sanitary district General Manager Scott Carroll said his agency isn’t opposed to such a review. The district board’s preference, though, has been to wait until next year when LAFCO is scheduled to conduct a new round of MSRs.
Doing one early could push additional costs onto the two local districts, Carroll said.
“Why would you want to spend money when it’s already going to be budgeted [by LAFCO] in 2018?” he asked.
CMSD board President Mike Scheafer declined to comment on the vote, saying he’d like to wait until he’s received and reviewed Mesa Water’s letter.
The two districts have tussled over the concept of consolidation for months.
Water district officials say doing so could result in substantial savings for ratepayers. Last year, they commissioned a study from consultant Arcadis U.S. Inc. that concluded merging could result in up to $15.6 million in one-time savings and as much as $2.7 million annually.
Sanitary district officials have repeatedly rejected those findings and said the study is flawed.
Mesa Water also took the consolidation question to the voting booth last November with Measure TT — an advisory ballot question asking voters whether they wanted the two districts to look into a possible merger.
The measure passed with 54.7% of the vote.
“Clearly there’s millions of dollars of savings,” board President Ethan Temianka said. “The people of Costa Mesa have directly asked us through their vote at the ballot box to further study this, yet CMSD refuses to listen to the voice of the public.”
In a letter to Mesa Water last December, however, Scheafer alleged the measure “misinformed and misguided the public into believing that the savings it [the Arcadis study] purported … would in fact occur via consolidation.”
Given LAFCO’s schedule, he wrote, “we strongly believe any resources or money spent on consolidation at this time is a misuse of public funds.”
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
