CALABASAS : Agency Considering Water Rate Increase

The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District is considering increasing customers’ rates by an average of 7% to make up for declining revenues due to the recession.

The proposed hike would add about $4.29 a month to the bill of the average ratepayer, said Bobbe Wymer, public information officer for the district. Customers would see the increase on their Nov. 1 bills.

The board will hold a public hearing on the proposal Monday at 7 p.m. at the water district’s headquarters, 4232 Las Virgenes Road.

The fare increase, if approved, would be the third in as many years.

The increase would help fund the district’s $34.3-million operating budget for fiscal 1994-95, which has already been approved, Wymer said. There is a complicated formula set up to determine how the increases would be applied.

“Some customers will pay slightly higher percentage increases than others,” she said. “It will depend on how much customers use and where they live.”

For instance, among those who would pay higher rates for water and sanitation services, she said, would be those who live in higher elevations and have to have their water pumped up to them.

The agency serves about 60,000 people--or about 18,000 households--in Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Westlake Village and several unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County.

The district’s revenues have dropped in recent years due to the decline in construction, Wymer said.

Over the past three years, the district has lost $1 million annually in new connection fees, where it once brought in $9 million a year.

At the same time, the district still has to fund repairs and maintenance and other costs, she said. It has also undertaken several ambitious projects, including the $50-million Rancho Las Virgenes Composting Facility, which officially opens this month.

But Agoura Hills resident Ernie Dynda, president of United Organizations of Taxpayers, a Los Angeles-based taxpayers’ watchdog group, found fault with the district’s reasoning.

Existing customers, he said, “have already paid for their water lines, and their connection fees and everything else . . . the more housing you get, the more need you have in services. But if there are no more connections, they cannot justify increases.”

Glen Peterson, a member of the district’s board of directors, said Wednesday the district has made all the cuts it can, including a hiring freeze, and has no choice.

“If they want to oppose the rate hike, just show us where they can cut more,” he said.

During the 1993-94 fiscal year, the district increased rates for residential customers $2.75 a month for water and $3 a month for sanitation, Wymer said. In fiscal 1992-93, the agency increased rates by $3.36 per month for water.

That last increase was necessary, she said, because the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies the district with water, increased the rates it charges the district by 14 cents per billing unit.