Oxnard--The City will conduct a public hearing on May 2 to consider proposed rates for water services.
THOSE rates include purchasing, treating, and pumping limited local and imported water sources, maintaining over 500 miles of water pipelines, maintaining and repairing critical infrastructure for reliable water delivery, replacing aging infrastructure, conducting weekly and monthly certified laboratory water quality testing (About 3,700 annual water samples are collected for about 300 different constituents), along with maintaining and reading about 43,000 water meters, and hiring and retaining qualified, licensed staff to operate the water system.
Assistant Public Works Director Joe Marcinko said in 2017, the City did its last Cost of Service Study and determined it needed to raise the rates.
The Cost of Service Study evaluates costs and income versus expenditures, he said, then estimates the costs over a number of years to determine what the income needs to be to cover costs.
“It’s very complicated and covers every single expenditure or operating cost,” he said. “There’s also debt financing from your larger capital projects. There are a lot of numbers that go into it, so it can be intimidating and complex.”
Marcinko likened it to balancing a checkbook and looking at…
